Black Sheep: LuckyMe's NAKED plot their debut LP
Ungoogleable darksmiths NAKED help The Skinny break down one of the most hotly anticipated debuts of the coming year
NAKED are a tricky band to introduce. Evasive on such topics as backstory and location, this mysterious outfit strive for the music – and the experience – to be the talking point. Mythologising aside, theirs is a clear voice, scrutinising our changing relationship with technology; with an impending first album, it’s time to hear what they have to say.
Last year was a busy one for the group, signing to Glasgow label LuckyMe, developing their unique live show, and producing their first record. Debut EP Youth Mode, released early in 2015, is a smoky, nebulous thing: five tracks of hazy guitar textures and shadowy beats, with the delicate vocal of frontwoman Agnes Gryczkowska bobbing through it like a siren lost at sea. Its unease resonates with a society plagued by FOMO and other social media anxieties.
That theme of technology seems particularly pertinent as we speak to the band via Skype, the day before a special London gig. Now a duo since the recent departure of Grant Campbell, the pair of them – guitarist Alex Johnston, plus Gryczkowska nursing a cold – talk excitedly of their plans and philosophy.
“It’s funny because it seems like quite a long time ago that we released the EP,” says Johnston. “Feels like it goes so fast and you forget. We’ve been doing a lot of work on the album – we’ve been working with Paul Corley, who did 0pn [Oneohtrix Poit Never] and Tim Hecker’s stuff, and it’s been amazing. We went to New York to record some of the album, and we played Red Bull Music Academy, and Primavera... We’ve basically just been working on a load of stuff, and testing the water with what we can do live.”
“We always try to incorporate smell, sound, taste, on top of everything else that is happening,” Gryczkowska explains, talking about their upcoming multi-sensory show. “Something that you really walk through and experience and don’t have a second thought.”
“People sing about cars and girls, why not about the important things?”
Their aim is to “seduce all of the senses,” transcending the traditional gig format easily documented on smartphones and digital media. It’s something that’s always been important to them, ever since their (poorly attended, by the band’s own admission) inaugural show at Sneaky Pete’s some time back, replete with lasers and smoke effects.
Gryczkowska expands: “It gives us an opportunity to think about all the different elements and why they’re important to us and what they mean. For example, picking the type of smell that we’re gonna use has a deeper meaning, depending on the situation and the music. In this case, it’s gonna reflect the sound of the album.”
The as-yet untitled album is slated for release later in the year. The band talk us through it. “It’s an expansion of the sound, moving away from the more dreamlike, dreamscape sound of the first release. It’s more realistic, harsher, violent. It’s as if we’ve taken all the elements that were there on the first EP and we’ve focused in – everything’s been dialled in and become sharper, and more extreme. But at the same time, a lot of the elements – the softness of the human voice, the delicacy of that – are still retained.”
“The most important thing is that the sound has changed,” adds Gryczkowska. “It’s moved away from this more hopeful feeling to being much more about this gradual decay of physicality, emotions, values, and is more focusing on this violent and cold and detached environment we live in. And especially being in a big city, I feel like that’s had an effect on our music. It’s much more anxious and feels much more isolated.”
Before Youth Mode and LuckyMe, NAKED worked with US activist/rapper Mykki Blanco in producing his single Moshin’ in the Front, a much more aggressive track than their EP. Will the album share that level of bite? In part, says Johnston, but only in that “it’s much heavier, it’s much more distorted.”
Does this mean the album will then perhaps align more with the dark, hip-hop-influenced electronics that their label is known for? This prompts a din of unanimous disagreement. “We’re pretty much the black sheep of LuckyMe,” says Johnston.
It’s certainly rare for the predominantly electronic label to sign a group like NAKED, though they’re not quite the first band on their books. “There was American Men,” Gryczkowska explains, referring to the synthy post-rock four-piece signed in 2010. “We’re the first... um, whatever you’d call it...”
“Pop group,” deadpans Johnston, and they both laugh.
In their lyrics, and on social media, the band spotlight a wariness of contemporary technology, but are keen to stress an impartial view. “Technology, obviously, is paramount to the human race, throughout time. It always has a cultural impact,” says Johnston.
“There’s a symbiosis between the technosphere and biosphere,” suggests Gryczkowska. “We don’t ever want to take a stand where we say, ‘This isn’t good.’ We’re not against, we’re not pro, we’re just observing this current moment where technology’s playing a big effect on our physicalities.”
NAKED are more interested in the visceral impact it has on people’s lives, insisting they’re not an ‘internet band’. “People sing about cars and girls, why not about the important things?”
“That’s played a big role in our visual language, because it’s such a big part of our everyday existence,” Gryczkowska adds. “Technology’s becoming like a prosthetic, becoming almost a part of our body. This is something we’re interested in as well, aesthetically: symbiosis and juxtaposition of fleshlike and techlike.
“Also, that takes us back to why we want to do certain things with our live show. On the one hand, the distribution of music and art and images, et cetera, over the internet is so easy now, but at the same time we are trying to create a situation that is very much a live situation where you actually experience all of these impacts, physically, on your own body, via hand and mouth and not via a glass screen.”
We draw some parallels between fanatical techno-consumerism and religion. “It’s funny that you’re saying this,” Gryczkowska replies, “because we’re actually using the smell of church for the show tomorrow for that reason. What is religion now? It’s changed so much; this is what our religion is. Our phones are our religion.” NAKED even suggest phones are a modern day crucifix round our necks.
The promotional imagery for some of their recent gigs uses an iPhone with a cracked screen. It’s indicative of our reliance on smartphones that just the sight of it triggers a deep-rooted unease. “This is actually what we were thinking about,” says Gryczkowska. “You get this instantaneous fear that your screen cracks...” They’d taken inspiration from some viral YouTube videos of someone repeatedly destroying their iPhone 6 to the extent of almost fetishising the act.
Though the band are now working out of London, there was a time when they were considered an Edinburgh-based group. Is geography really not relevant to them, as artists? “Oh yeah, definitely,” Johnston answers. “It’s weird when you go and see interviews and the first thing they say about people is that they’re like, ‘They’re an American or like Liberian-based band’ or something like that. I don’t understand what the point in it is.” The band insist they’re internationalists by nature.
“And soundwise we don’t want to be associated with any sort of geographical location either,” adds Gryczkowska. “It’s more about actual human values and physical emotions rather than any sort of pre-known information about where we’re from, or where we went to school et cetera, et certera, because it’s irrelevant.”
Hence the band’s name? “The word itself is very much about being fragile and human,” she explains, “completely exposed and unable to protect yourself from everything that’s around you.”
“It’s like a Rorschach test,” they say. “Everybody reads into it what they can. Some people see it as being fragile, and other people see it as being bold or crass or whatever. It’s like a mirror. For a band, it’s the most decontextualised word you could come up with.”
Three to Hear...
From Sydney to Liverpool, here are a few more under the radar debuts to brace yourself for in 2016
From The Kites of San Quentin
From The Kites of San Quentin have been making shape shifting electronic music operating between hip-hop, jazz and electronica for over a half a decade in Manchester, lurking in the shadows while the city's central narrative has taken place. However, after a number of EPs and split releases, 2016 is finally the year the trio are promising something more full-length, with the group hinting in a handful of intimate shows last summer a wholly more cohesive direction than anything they've previously put together. [Simon Jay Catling]
Cavalier Song
The carefully sculpted avant-noise of Cavalier Song is worth keeping ears open for: they’re an enticing oddity, drawing from fragmented imagery, the wildest of moodswings, and expansive contractions of tense yet immersive sound. Flashes of Glen Branca and Rhys Chatham emerge among the residual sunspots, but the results are always approachable, even at their most deafening. Debut LP Blezard is set to drop through God Unknown Records in late February, and it’s certain to be a cracker. [Will Fitzpatrick]
Matt Corby
Straddling the strange ground between teen heart-throb (as a kid he was runner-up in Australian Idol) and serious indie artist, Matt Corby’s long-awaited debut album, Telluric, arrives in March on the back of a series of EPs and plenty of well-received live shows. Now based in LA, there’s a Californian slacker rock vibe to his material, but it’s the voice that elevates him way above talent show TV fodder. [Duncan Harman]