INTERVIEW: HotWax

When I caught up with HotWax before their headline gig at The Lexington in April, bassist Lola Sam and vocalist & guitarist Tallulah Sim-Savage both revealed that ‘Rip It Out’ was their favourite track from their upcoming debut EP, A Thousand Times. Today (17th May), the Hastings band have shared their visceral new anthem about contraception, accompanied by a riotous video shot at The Green Door Store in Brighton.

Having just returned from the seaside city after performing multiple shows at The Great Escape Festival, the trio – completed by knockout drummer Alfie Sayers – have been garnering a loyal following on their local live scenes of Hastings and Brighton over the past few years. They have a busy festival season ahead of them, which includes slots at Mad Cool in Madrid and Visions Festival in Hackney, as well as sharing a bill with The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs at All Points East Festival in August. This might seem like an intimidating schedule, but the three teenagers are taking things in their stride.

“We did our first ever mini tour recently, just to get a taste of it,” Tallulah tells me. “We’ve been gigging for years, but we’ve never gone away and played more than three gigs in a row. It was really nice spending time travelling together and bonding. Playing live is our favourite thing ever. I never feel happier than when I’m playing live. We’re just really enjoying everything, it’s so much fun.”

Tallulah and Lola have known each other for years and have the unshakable bond that comes from surviving school together. Tallulah explains that the pair played in a band called The Kids when they were fifteen years old. “I played guitar, Lola played bass and we had a singer and another drummer. When that band ended, we formed HotWax and I decided to sing. I would never sing usually, but I thought ‘I’m just gonna do it’, because we got on really well and we didn’t really have another friend at school to invite into the band.” She laughs at that last part, and I do to. It’s hard to believe that the pair struggled to find friends to play along with them, as they both seem modest, but truly passionate about being in a band making music together.

Drummer Alfie can’t remember a time when he wasn’t playing drums. It seems like an act of serendipity that he met Lola and Tallulah, completing the HotWax line-up. Together, they create the type of guitar music that other bands take years to master. Their sound is raw, but self assured, visceral yet melodic. Each time I’ve seen them play, I’ve felt an overwhelming rush of joy, because I know I’m witnessing something truly special. But maybe I’m just projecting and being sentimental? I wish I’d been in a band like theirs when I was eighteen.

So what influenced HotWax’s sound? Lola says she remembers listening to CDs in the car with her Mum – “stuff like The Beatles, Amy Winehouse and Destiny’s Child” – before she discovered rock music in her early teens. For Tallulah, it began with a love of Lady Gaga, before her Mum played Blondie’s Parallel Lines album at a family party, and she became totally obsessed with it. “I was listening to that album for a whole month,” she smiles. “I remember feeling kind of guilty about it in a way, that rock music was ‘bad’ – I don’t know why? I was quite an anxious child. I was like, ‘Oh, this feels really bad, but it’s really good!’. That’s probably when I got into heavier music and was inspired to play electric guitar, rather than acoustic.”

Through these eclectic influences and an endearing rebellious streak, Lola and Tallulah wrote the eponymous track from their upcoming debut EP, A Thousand Times. “The reason why we called the song and the EP ‘A Thousand Times’ is because Lola and I have gone through complicated relationships together, but it’s also about being just everything to each other,” Tallulah explains. “It’s sort of like we’ve had this argument a thousand times. It’s all about growing up and the things that come with that. Dramas, arguments, heartbreaks, everything. It’s celebrating us growing older and still being friends.”

The track is now a staple in the band’s live shows, but it took a while for it to sound the way that it does now. “It took us ages to record it,” Lola explains. “We didn’t record it until Alfie was in the band. The music video for it is made up of clips from then until now. So it’s like this photography project. With the song and this EP, it has been a collective effort from us and our producer as well. I’m really happy with it. I think that we went into it with the view of ‘this is what it sounds like now, live’, then we when you go into studio, you have more options of where the song can go and it can end up sounding different, but in a good way.” The band worked alongside Kid Kapichi’s Ben Beetham to bring their record to life. “He’s a great producer, he was so enthusiastic,” Alfie adds.

With their debut EP released in just a few days (May 19th), some stellar live shows lined up, and their recent signing to Transgressive Records, I ask how the band are feeling about these impressive feats. Tallulah is quick to respond: “It’s weird. It’s all I’ve ever wanted and I’m so happy, but everything’s happened so quickly. It’s kind of hard to process it and not to feel the pressure a bit. We’re writing our second EP and it’s like ‘Oh, people are actually going to hear these songs now,’ it’s a weird shift from just being a small town band. Yeah, it’s quite overwhelming sometimes.”

“It’s not just us that we have to impress anymore,” Lola adds. I caveat that with the fact that people seem to already be deeply impressed by what they do, which they smile at. We close our conversation with some recommendations on what to listen to. They all chime in enthusiastically, especially Alfie: “There’s a band called Lime Garden who we really like, they’re from Brighton. Kid Kapichi are really great. We’re good friends with a band called Mindframe, they’re really cool. Our local music scenes are great. We also love a band called Congratulations and Honey Badger too!”

Watch the video for ‘Rip It Out’ below.

HotWax Live Dates 2023
17th May – Brighton, The Prince Albert (Pearl Harts tour)
18th May – Portsmouth, The Edge of the Wedge (Pearl Harts tour)
19th May – Bristol, The Lanes (Pearl Harts tour)
20th May – Hastings, Printworks (support from Snayx and Borough Council DJ set)
1st June – Manchester, 33 Oldham St (Alien Chicks support)
2nd July – Newport, Rebel Fest
7th July – Madrid, Mad Cool Festival
22nd July – Hackney, Visions Festival
25th August – London, All Points East Festival
9th September – Torquay, Burn It Down Festival

Follow HotWax on bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram, Twitter & Facebook

Photo Credit: Holly Whitaker

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut

 

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PREMIERE: Charlotte Carpenter – ‘Spinning Plates’

Having charmed our ears as a guest on our radio show, and with 2017’s Shelter EP, East Midlands artist Charlotte Carpenter has previously shared stages with artists such as Marika Hackman and George Ezra. Now, having received acclaim from the likes of NME and BBC Radio 6Music, she has announced the release of her debut album later this year.

Taken from the album, new single ‘Spinning Plates’ offers a poignant reflection on the power structures and misogyny within the music industry. Propelled by a fierce energy, Carpenter’s gritty, raw vocals flow alongside catchy Americana-infused hooks. With a stirring sentiment that is all too relatable – lyrics such as “I’m just trying to be a better sister / daughter / lover…” highlighting how women’s worth is so often only seen as important within their relationship to men -, the track oozes an impassioned blues-soaked allure as it builds with a glistening, anthemic drive. A striking call to arms to fellow women and marginalised groups within the industry, ‘Spinning Plates’ offers a defiant return to form from this innovative artist, showcasing her ability to fuse together her trademark soulful musicality with a cathartic, empowering spirit.

Of the track, Carpenter explains:

“There’s a lot to unpack in this song… from societal pressures on the roles you are meant to fulfil as a woman, alongside the struggle of keeping up a relentless positivity to being a musician – and how impossible it is to ever get the balance between the two.”

Watch the new video for ‘Spinning Plates’ here:

‘Spinning Plates’ is set for release tomorrow, 17th May. Catch her live (supporting SOFT LAD and Kelli Blanchett):

14th July – The Finsbury, London 
27th July – The Victoria, Birmingham
28th July – Black Prince, Northampton
30th July – The Castle, Manchester 

Photo Credit: Fraser West

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EP: Midwife & Vyva Melinkolya – ‘Orbweaving’

A disarming collection of hypnotic vocals and mesmeric guitar sounds, Midwife and Vyva Melinkolya have shared their collaborative EP, Orbweaving. Written and recorded at Madeline Johnston aka Midwife’s studio in New Mexico in the Chihuahuan Desert, the five songs that form the record are a beautiful byproduct of the idiosyncratic environment they were created in.

From nights spent “herping” on empty roadsides looking for rattlesnakes, roadkill and orb-weaver spiders, to meaningful moments shared between Johnston and Angel Diaz (Vyva Melinkolya) in the studio, Orbweaving smoulders with the residual heat of sun-scorched sands, but it’s laced with the shiver-inducing melancholy of desolate desert nights too.

From the lullaby-esque tones of opener ‘Miss America’, through to the epic twelve minutes of the all-encompassing final eponymous track, Johnston and Diaz’s deceptively simple lyrical motifs and ambient riffs perfectly pacify the pain of their past. Forging a strong friendship during 2020, the pair guided each other through a turbulent emotional time, and in the process began spinning the intricately woven, affecting web of sounds that now form Orbweaving.

From the aching sincerity of ‘NMP’ (No More Pain), to the heavy ambience of ‘Hounds Of Heaven’, the duo navigate the duality that comes with losing and reclaiming connection with internal and external spaces. Their poetic, hazy laments provide a heavy form of hope, the type that reveals itself unexpectedly; like emerging from the morning fog into the sunlight after a restless night pacing in the dark.

This feeling is aptly captured on the apocalyptic-titled ‘Plague X’. Inspired by the life-cycle of the cicadas insect – whose 17 year periodical took place in 2021 at the time of recording – the track gently personifies the horror and the sublime processes that occur in the natural world, and mirrors the inner emotional metamorphoses that Johnston and Diaz experienced themselves during the time they spent together. Its ominous context doesn’t detract from the immersive, mesmeric vocals and waves of rich, hazy guitar.

Whilst it may feel bleak and fragile in places, there is a truly bright human thread that underscores Orbweaving. Together, Johnston and Diaz have spun a delicate web that simultaneously connects and soothes the senses, but also manages to retain the grit of the grains of New Mexico sand they were inspired by too. Bathe yourself in Johnston’s trademark “heaven metal” and Diaz’s evocative shoegazey noise, both of which are seamlessly tethered here.

Listen to Orbweaving on bandcamp and Spotify

Follow Midwife on bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram & Facebook

Follow Vyva Melinkolya on bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram & Facebook

Photo Credit: Jon Mcwilliams

Kate Crudgington
@kate_crudge

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EP: Tokky Horror – ‘KAPPACORE’

Thank fuck for attitude! Emerging from the pit to release KAPPACORE, hardcore punk/techno collective Tokky Horror have recorded a visceral collection of mosh-inducing dance melodies; an infectious melding of distorted breakbeat chaos and abrasive guitar filth – from Zee Divine, Ava Akira and Mollie Rush – to piss off the punk purists!

Following their 2021 extended play from Alcopop! Records, I Found the Answers and Now I Want More – later incorporated into their compilation of off-kilter DIY noise, Home Recordings 2020-2021 – KAPPACORE is their latest mutation; a hyper-intense techno-punk record for misfits. Opening with ‘MAXINE’, featuring Blazer Boccle, Zee’s (formerly of Liverpudlian queer punks Queen Zee) (witch)craft results in hypnotic drum & bass; Blazer, Ava and Mollie’s pseudo-rapping buried in the mix, scrambling from a shallow grave for your attention, making your heart skip, skip a beat! “We are the weirdos, mister.”

Now primed to explode, ‘HAMMER 2 THE FACE’ follows, creating punkish energy through Aphex Twin-esque idiosyncratic techno; Tokky Horror’s do-it-yourself ethos resulting in grinding industrial guitar riffs layered with Zee’s experimental hardcore production. Let the bass hit you like a hammer to the face! Preserving this chaotic energy, ‘JAZZ MUSIC’ is a textural electrical assault to the senses, with only woodwind instrumentation providing brief respite from Tokky Horror’s groove. “I love jazz music / You love jazz music / I love jazz music / Tokky Horror crew!”

‘TOILET’, another rave-inducing headbanger, is the crew’s “heartbreak song about falling out of love with a scene.” Punk is supposed to represent anarchy! It should be the perfect petri dish for activism; punk rock’s lyrical vitriol expressing an intense desire for sociopolitical change. Unfortunately, most “punks” were too wasted to protest… So, back in the lab, the mad scientists at Tokky Horror are working towards creating their own sub-culture; one of inclusivity, and ‘TOILET’ is their melancholic dance punk anthem! “We are all searching for change…”

Closing out KAPPACORE with pulsating basslines and distorted vocals comes ‘TRANMERE RAVER’, featuring MC NULTi. The Tokky Horror crew crescendoing into a cataclysm of crusty electronic crud. From the breakbeats of Orbital to the electropunk of The Prodigy, Tokky Horror proudly wear their influences on their Kappa branded sleeves. This is the Tokky Horror Show: hypnotic anarchic catharsis!

Tokky Horror UK Live Dates 2023
18th May – KAPPACORE EP Release Party Blondies, London
26th May – Sneister Festival, The Hague NL
9th June – Fiestas De La Artes, Manchester
5th August – Rebellion Festival, Blackpool
18th August – Convoy Cabaret Festival, Dorchester
19th August – Arctangent Festival, Somerset
9th September – Burn It Down Festival, Devon

Follow Tokky Horror on bandcamp, Spotify, Twitter, Instagram & Facebook

Ken Wynne
@Ken_Wynne

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