Getdown Services' Josh Law on Massive Champion

“I would have made Justin Bieber play a song that was, like, actually well known.”

We hear from Getdown Services’ Josh Law via voicenote a couple of days after the FIFA World Cup final. The Minehead-raised duo made their feelings about that halftime show pretty clear on Instagram, so we ask, what would they have done differently? “Unless it was Chris Martin and Ronaldo fighting to the death, there’s nothing that would have been interesting enough to justify putting a half-hour break in the middle of the game.”

We’re obviously not here to talk about football, but hearing Law go off on one about a halftime show Wayne Rooney described as “crap” raises our dopamine levels in the same way Getdown Services’ music and live shows do.

A project started in lockdown to offer Law and Ben Sadler a means of distraction, Law says it’s “business as usual” for the lifelong friends whose rise in popularity continues to rocket. But it’s not all been sunshine and roses. Ahead of their appearance on Later… with Jools Holland they took to Instagram: ‘This could be the moment that waves of online abuse begin for us… It’s already started trickling in slowly. Our song The Radiator and our success in general really gets on some people’s nerves.’

Photo: Sion Marshall-Waters

“There's this imposter syndrome that comes in massively and the only way we've worked around that is to just sort of shut it all out and don't look at it – a bit like the sun,” Law says. But he does admit “the abuse has gotten worse. We really struggled with it at first in a way that surprised us… Neither of us really care or lose any sleep about people not liking what we do, but it's hard when you’re faced with people being unkind.”

Reckoning with a past version of himself, Law says: “It's reminded me of the way that I've maybe been a bit like that in the past. Not necessarily abusing people online but just sort of going around being a negative person, putting out judgemental, jealous, bitter vibes into the world.” He continues: “Luckily, I put that in the music more now than I used to. Before, I'd just sort of mindlessly chuck it into the universe, but when you see other people doing that stuff, you go, ‘I don't want to be like that.’”

In a bid to "clean up their act", on their latest album, Massive Champion, they’ve opted not to “be so targeted”. “When you start having a go at James Bay or fucking, you know, Jamie Oliver or whatever, it's one thing if no one's paying attention, but if people are paying attention, you’re just sort of putting a target on people you don't know regardless of whether they deserve it – you don't want to just attack for the sake of attacking.”

Holding up a magnifying glass to their childhood, themes of death, intrusive thoughts and insecurities simmer beneath the surface of Massive Champion's often upbeat, hopeful sounding music. While The Radiator’s electro swagger grapples with “losing your rag with inanimate objects”, this happy/sad interplay is perhaps best exemplified on Cha Cha Slide, Stop Living and No One Likes Me, the latter of which Law describes as "this weird dark part of my head”, which checks out when you consider its opening line: ‘Squeezing a hamster, until its eyes pop out.' Delivered over chugging synths, the vegetarian for most of his childhood, Law says it’s about “being a kid and just going, ‘I just want to kill it,’ but you don’t really, it’s like that thing where you just want to throw your phone off a bridge.”

Massive Champion artwork

Meanwhile on Stop Living, 'Still on the payroll, looking for a way to stop living’ dreamily floats over sun-drenched funk- and disco-inflected rhythms. “A lot of what made me miserable in my life was my work circumstances,” Law says. “I'm sort of living a dream job, like, genuinely, we are, and that's made me loads happier, but it hasn't made it all go away... It turns out this stuff runs deeper than just your circumstances.”

Penultimate track Lentils is the eczema banger we (me, certainly) all need. “If I start thinking about things I was frustrated or insecure about as a kid, the eczema was a big one – getting called ‘zombie’ at school... You feel like a freak.” Law continues: “The feelings of being insecure as a child, you carry those same feelings through to being an adult. Cha Cha Slide is more like when those feelings get the better of you and you’re crippled by self-consciousness, self-doubt and confusion, and Lentils is more about when you’re sort of puffing your chest up and going, ‘Yeah, I am a freak, but I’d still fucking beat you in a race.'”

This deeply personal, silly, relatable, confronting yet confident new record lands during the middle of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where the duo play two shows that are sure to be joyfully cathartic. “I’ve been to stand-up once or twice in my life,” Law says. “A couple of people have said it over the years, ‘you should go to the Fringe’ – I don't think we really work as a comedy act.” Why not go see for yourself.

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Massive Champion is released on 14 Aug via Breakfast Records
Getdown Services play La Belle Angele, Edinburgh, 30 & 31 Aug; SWG3, Glasgow, 26 Nov