Folly Group share new single ‘I'll Do What I Can’
Folly Group | Photo Credit: Matt Ritson
“You’ll be left wondering if there’s anything Folly Group cannot do” - Dork
“Folly Group have proven that it’s possible to follow the rules of a tired old genre and come up with something fresh and interesting” - DIY
“Brilliant, experimental jungle rock” - The i
“London collective thriving in well-crafted chaos” - NME
“With more range already than many established artists achieve in their career, it's exciting to imagine what else they could go on to create” - The Line Of Best Fit
"Energetic and driven." - CLASH
Today, Folly Group have announced details of a new single titled ‘I'll Do What I Can’. The track is taken from their much anticipated debut album ‘Down There!’, which is set for release on 12th January 2024 via So Young Records, and follows their recent singles ‘Strange Neighbour’ (which was recently playlisted on BBC Radio 6 Music) and the borderless ‘Big Ground’.
Following an acclaimed debut EP ‘Awake And Hungry’ (also on So Young Records), and its follow-up in last year's ‘Human And Kind’ - an EP that received a perfect 5-star review from Dork, and a glowing 4-stars from DIY - The new album arrives on the heels of the band's critically acclaimed return with ‘Strange Neighbour’ last month and their packed-out tour with Brooklyn's Geese, who are signed to Partisan Records.
Whereas the previous single ‘Big Ground’ introduced the duality between rock and electronic elements in the new album - a central tenet to the ‘Down There!'s’ make up. The new single ‘I'll Do What I Can’ is a darker, heavier track which leans more into the rock-oriented spectrum of the bands sound with angular guitar work, an adrenaline-fuelled rhythm section, and hook-driven vocals that touch on the topic of turbulent friendships.
Speaking on the themes behind the track, vocalist / drummer Sean Harper, says: "I’ll Do What I Can is about forgiving in a situation when forgiveness doesn’t come naturally. We’ve all been wronged by a friend at some point. In those instances, we feel a push and pull between a kind of social muscle memory which helps us forget our upset for the sake of the group, and a separate internal voice that shouts: “you don’t owe this person your company right now."
I suppose, it attempts to encapsulate a battle between comfort in the short term and peace in the long term. It tries to force itself through the moral hoops we all occasionally force ourselves through to wilfully let go of a grudge, because sooner or later we realise that holding a grudge means its target is winning."
The single's striking and claustrophobic accompanying video also sees the band work together once again with Bristol visual outfit CLUMP Collective, who also directed the unsettlingly funny video for ‘Strange Neighbour‘
Drawing from post-punk, dub, trip-hop, dance music and traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms, Folly Group have established themselves amongst UK experimental rock’s new leading lights. Marrying open-hearted lyricism with furiously inventive self-production, this bracing, complex record lends a genuinely original voice to a familiar theme: alienation in modern Britain.
Collaboratively self-produced by the full band, ‘Down There!’ is thorough in its exploration of being a young adult in this country: covering mental health (‘Bright Night’), physical health (‘Freeze’), financial pressures (‘East Flat Crows’), and more. Its lyrics are split between Harper and guitarist / vocalist Louis Milburn, who – despite their respectively more abstract and literal styles – deal with shared themes of “disenfranchisement, dejection, anxiety and financial ruin,” Harper explains. “For every personal step forward, an off-the-cuff decision by a politician we’ll never meet puts us two steps back – a lot of the time we’re basically furious.”
This is illustrated in the 3D cave network on the cover: it features 10 points, lifted from a map of the 10 most important places in London to the record’s creation. “They’re represented as a cave, as a visual metaphor for feeling under the weight of the world,” he continues.
The band tie many of these feelings to the realities of being a young musician, which they have to balance with full-time jobs. “We don’t have enough time to do this band, but we do it anyway. We make enormous sacrifices in areas of our lives, out of blind faith that we’re right to be doing this.” This underscores the feeling that ‘Down There!’ is – despite its themes – a triumphant album. Its committed, meticulous creation and honest lyricism speak to the group’s shared self-belief and determination, against the odds this album details. “The mere fact that it exists is a victory.”
Formed in 2019, the band comprises Harper, Milburn, Tom Doherty (bass), and Kai Akinde-Hummel (percussion, drums). Following the national lockdowns, they burst onto the UK scene with the BBC Radio 6 Music A-Listed singles ‘Butt No Rifle’ and ‘Sandfight’: the latter of which IDLES’ Joe Talbot declared his “favourite song of the year.” Heralded as ‘one to watch’ by NME, DIY and BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders, they released their acclaimed debut EP ‘Awake And Hungry’ in 2021.
This led to tours with Do Nothing and PVA, a Metronomy collaboration, and festivals including Latitude, Truck and Pitchfork Music Festival London. The band followed this with their explosive second EP ‘Human And Kind’, featuring the BBC Radio 6 Music A-Listed single ‘I Raise You (The Price Of Your Head)’. This led to a UK headline tour (including London’s Studio 9294), tour supports with the likes of Orlando Weeks, and festival appearances at Glastonbury, The Great Escape and SXSW.
Their debut album ‘Down There!’ is shaped by genre-hopping: shifting playfully between post-punk, dub, trip-hop and more. The band ascribe this to their far-ranging reference points at the outset of making it. While Akinde-Hummel recalls listening to lots of drill, UK jazz and hardcore punk, Milburn had gotten heavily into 80s artists like Squeeze, The Specials and Joe Jackson. In the production alone, references span Dangermouse, ESG and Soulwax. “We all had a million different things we were pulling from,” Harper explains. “I wanted it to have this one blanket draped over the whole thing – a consistently dusty, downtrodden effect, because that’s what our favourite albums are like. We love Massive Attack and early Gorillaz, where it’s not about genre as much as creating your own cinematic universe.” Running through it is an experimental sensibility. “All the instrumental parts have been written with the desire to do anything other than the obvious, natural thing – there’s not much rock in our rock songs.”
Central to the album is Folly Group’s fusion of rock subgenres with ideas from dance music. Programmed drums appear alongside live percussion on most tracks. Dance music’s influence also expands to the simple, direct guitar arrangements played by Milburn, who claims “I would never want to play a guitar part that you wouldn’t hear played on a synth in a dance tune.” Overall, tracks in ‘Down There!’ exist on a spectrum, ranging from off-kilter pop-meets-dub crossover of ‘Strange Neighbour’ to the cold electronica of ‘Nest’: gradually developing around a steady rhythm in the style of a techno track.
Further contrast stems from Milburn and Harper’s contrasting lyrics, dealing with their experiences of alienation and financial pressure as young adults in modern Britain. Their recent single ‘Strange Neighbour’ reflects on the housing crisis. “Everyone’s being forced to move house, with rents constantly getting put up; you used to have communities, but now you live close to people who probably won’t get to know you – because they know in a year you’ll be gone,” Milburn explains.
The album’s scope also covers more universal themes. These include anxieties around technology in the storming, heavily electronic ‘New Feature’, mental health in the darker, muscular ‘Bright Night’ and physical health in ‘Freeze’. “We were on tour with Do Nothing, and I drank so much over a period of time that I ended up in hospital, thinking I was having heart attacks” Milburn explains. “They were like: ‘no – you’ve just got really bad heartburn.’ It’s about those times of reflection, when something so humbling and embarrassing happens, and you just reflect on your lifestyle.”
Folly Group collaboratively self-produced ‘Down There!’, working with a shifting cast of instruments courtesy of Milburn’s day-job. “I work at a place that buys and sells equipment, so this stuff constantly moves through” he explains. “We might have a vintage Roland in, so we’ll use it for some songs. Two weeks later the band will say ‘can we do that again?’ but it’ll be gone – sold to someone with actual money.” The album is full of curious additions, including the sounds of members hitting chairs and fire extinguishers, while the combination of live and programmed drums feeds into their live shows: forming a basis for the electrifying, heavily-improvised back-and-forth between percussionists Akinde-Hummel and Harper.
The band members all reflect differently on what they’d like listeners to take from ‘Down There!’. “I’d like it to be something that not just people who listen to post-punk can relate to,” Akinde-Hummel says.
“I want somebody to be walking to school listening to it,” adds Milburn. “They’ve got to nip across the park, and it’s full of mist because it’s four degrees and the second week of January.”
“I’d like it if people felt they were hearing a band that wasn’t resting on its laurels” claims Harper.
“I’d like ‘surprise’” adds Doherty. “I’d like it if there’s just one or two moments on this album where someone who doesn’t know much about us goes ‘Oh. Fuck me. That’s a bit special.’”
‘Down There!’ is out 12th January 2024 via So Young Records
Pre-order here
Full bio here
Folly Group
Down There!
Out 12th January 2024 on So Young Records
1. Big Ground
2. I'll Do What I Can
3. Bright Night
4. East Flat Crows
5. Strange Neighbour
6. Freeze
7. Pressure Pad
8. Nest
9. New Feature
10. Frame
Tour dates:
6 Mar - Brighton Patterns
7 Mar - Bedford Esquires
8 Mar - Cardiff Clwb Ifor Bach
9 Mar - Bristol Strange Brew
12 Mar - Birmingham Dead Wax
13 Mar - Liverpool Arts Club
14 Mar - Manchester Yes (Pink Room)
15 Mar - Leeds Belgrave Music Hall
16 Mar - Glasgow King Tuts
19 Mar - Newcastle Cluny 2
20 Mar - Nottingham Rescue Rooms
21 Mar - London Scala
2 Apr - Lille Aeronef Club
3 Apr - Paris Le Pop Up Du Label
4 Apr - La Roche Sur Yon Quai M
6 Apr - Bordeaux Rock School Barbey*
7 Apr - Donosti Dabadaba
8 Apr - Madrid Maravillas
9 Apr - Barcelona Heliogabal
11 Apr - Bologna Locomotiv
12 Apr - Bern Isc
13 Apr - Zurich Bogen F
16 Apr - Schorndorf Manufaktur
17 Apr - Prague Cafe Lese
18 Apr - Dresden Polimagie Festival
19 Apr - Berlin Urban Spree
20 Apr - Osnabrück Pop Salon
23 Apr - Cologne Bumann & Sohn
24 Apr - Nijmegen Merleyn
25 Apr - Amsterdam Paradiso
26 Apr - Rotterdam Roodkapje
28 Apr - Brussels Botanique
* supporting Yard Act
Folly Group are:
Kai Akinde-Hummel - Percussion
Louis Milburn - Guitar/Vocals
Sean Harper - Drums/Vocals
Tom Doherty - Bass
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