Rip it Up: The disparate group of artists upending convention in Manchester
Bound by a shared ethos and fed up with the predictable, Another Country $$$$, BUFFEE, Crimewave, Mogan and SILVERWINGKILLER are building a DIY communal culture driven by shared purpose and friendship.
“We want it to feel like the kind of music you would buy from the dark web,” SILVERWINGKILLER’s James Baca tells me. “Something surreal, violent, dystopian.”
Since forming in 2024, the Manchester duo of Baca and Ni Yushang have built a reputation as an incendiary live outfit. With Baca on live drums and Yushang singing emphatically in her native Shanghainese over glitchy electronic noise, the pair operate at full-throttle maximalism. “We’re a punk band that haven’t got guitars,” Baca offers. “It’s dance music, it’s electronic, but with a live atmosphere.” The pair set out to exist as a raw, sweaty, chaotic antidote to the ubiquity of static laptop sets. Their debut EP, Triad Funded, is a pleasingly bonkers affair, inspired by ultraviolent Japanese video games. It features an ironic pro-gun song – Hold Up (All Firearms in the United Kingdom) – that sounds like an electroclash classic put through a woodchipper.
SILVERWINGKILLER are not alone in attempting to flip the conventions of what bands and electronic music sound like in Manchester at the moment. There is a thriving community of likeminded artists intent on redefining the sound of northern dancefloors and moving it into a more live, physical realm. “There’s a DJ world and there’s a band world, and we do not fit into either,” explains Jake Wilkinson, the brains behind Crimewave. While he cites the likes of Blackhaine, Rainy Miller and Space Afrika as inspirational local figures, Wilkinson also points to a tired local band scene he’s pushing against. “There’s been a lot of focus on the post-punk thing,” he says. “Just guys in bands and shit. I’m hoping this is the start of all of that coming to an end.”
Like SILVERWINGKILLER, Crimewave mention Crystal Castles as an influence and incorporate elements of the band world, retooled for dance environments. “I’m an electronic music producer but I’m using guitars instead of synths,” Wilkinson says, summing up the approach of this burgeoning scene of artists. “I’m turning a traditional rock instrument into something that can be used in dance music – it’s Aphex Twin meets My Bloody Valentine.”
“There’s been a lot of focus on the post-punk thing. Just guys in bands and shit. I’m hoping this is the start of all of that coming to an end” – Jake Wilkinson, Crimewave
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Along with kindred spirits BUFFEE, Mogan and Another Country $$$$, SILVERWINGKILLER and Crimewave have congregated for interviews and a photoshoot in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. In a publicist’s office, beers are cracked, tunes are cranked up and laughter echoes around the room. While some scenes can feel cynical and manufactured, or concocted by journalists to fill pages and screens (New Yorkshire, anyone?), it’s clear there is a genuine affinity and connection between them. They remix one another’s work, play shows together, drink together at the Peer Hat, party together at the White Hotel and even have a WhatsApp group. For the launch of Crimewave’s Scenes album, they almost fulfilled their dream of all playing on one bill, with all but SILVERWINGKILLER appearing.
The venue for that event – N/OM, a 90-cap, artist-led events space in the old NTS offices – was the perfect home for grassroots DIY get-togethers, but since its closure, there is no single venue central to this nascent movement. “It’s like every new venue that opens seems to have a food hall or something,” Wilkinson says. “I fucking hate that because you have all these kids wanting to go to see weird music, but then you’ve got this prosecco crowd. It’s oil and water.”
Similarly, there’s no single label nurturing this talent locally – the acts are all signed to imprints in New York, London and Bristol. Yet if you were to point to one key hub, Wellington House has been crucial for many of them. For years, until its recent relocation, the old cotton mill in Ancoats served as a vital rehearsal space, operating as an affordable base and creative incubator for young artists. SILVERWINGKILLER played their first gig there, throwing a party in one of the rooms.
“There is so much going on within our immediate circle,” Sam Shorter of Another Country $$$$ says. “It’s so vibrant.” With so much focus on solo artists in recent years, along with the cultural atomisation of everything, it’s understandable that young artists are craving something more rooted in shared purpose and connection. “With social media nowadays, there’s a real focus on the individual, people making music in a bubble and trying to sell their thing,” Shorter says. “But this sense of community, and developing a support network, is so important.”
The duo, also featuring Oli Knight on drums, are an audio-visual outfit who describe their sound as liminal heavy pop, hopecore breaks, distorted UKG and archival post-dance collage. Much like Crimewave, their music is inspired by experiences in clubs rather than created specifically for those spaces. “It isn’t traditional club music,” Shorter explains. “But it’s inspired by going to raves at places like the White Hotel. It’s a response to the atmosphere and the emotion of that euphoria and catharsis.” As a result, some of their tunes have a melodic, at times melancholic, tone. “We got called emo dance music one time, and I loved that,” Knight says.
BUFFEE, a.k.a. Beth McDermott, originally had more straight-up pop ambitions. “But I didn’t know how to, so it came out really weird,” she says. “What I do is pretty janky, and my mixing is diabolical, but that’s a big essence of the sound – I’m not sticking to a production rule book.”
Over time, her listening habits grew harder – gabba, hyperpop, hardcore – and began to seep into her music. You can hear this pummelling yet melodic concoction on her 2024 release, EP 2, but she’s already moving away from that. “Now I’m making dubstep,” she says. “I’m still singing, but it’s really bass-heavy stuff; I’m very into UK dance music that sounds like grime and 140 [bpm] – that kind of early 2000s laptop sound.” She, too, is an advocate for the intensity and tactility of live electronic music. “There’s a lot of laptoppers at the club doing ‘live’ sets, but all of us,” she says, waving around the room, “are actually performing live. There’s not so much of that going on right now.”
Keiran Lea-Jones, who performs as Mogan, is a queer DIY electronic artist who is “crooning over bleeps and bloops and blending field recordings with synths, drum loops and noise”. They also call this sound flaccid house. “I’d like it to be a genre,” they laugh. “I take inspiration from 90s Euro trance and a bit of [original] house music, but I like the idea that house is always upbeat – so what if it’s flaccid instead? As there’s also a dark and gothic element to my music. The best description I ever got after a gig was: ‘You sound like if Nick Cave ejaculated in Berghain.’”
“The best description I ever got after a gig was: ‘You sound like if Nick Cave ejaculated in Berghain” – Keiran Lea-Jones, Mogan
Lea-Jones grew up in Cornwall and honours their seaside roots via their unique attire. “I wear waders and have a mask made of all these tassels you attach to a fishing hook to try and lure fish,” they explain. “I hand-sewed hundreds of them onto balaclavas. I think it’s a very queer thing. I could never be a drag queen, but I can create masks and costumes in this DIY way, step on stage and release something.”
Scenes often emerge when a certain artist has a breakthrough, sparking a swell of artists looking to jump on that style and sound – but this bunch are different. “We don’t sound like one another at all,” Baca says. “But it feels like a scene where everyone’s got the memo and has the same mindset.” Lea-Jones echoes this: “People talk about a ‘Manchester sound’, but I don’t think that’s what this is. This is an ethos, based around a DIY community where everybody’s really open and supportive. When you’ve got that kind of peer support, it makes you push things creatively.”
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As a result, there’s no obvious name to umbrella all this under. It’s not nu nu rave, nor a 20-year-cycle rehash of dance-punk – it’s too mercurial and eclectic, with no manifesto or calculated plan. Instead, this is a disparate group of artists making a genuinely thrilling variety of far-reaching electronic music in the cracks of Manchester’s underground. They’ve come together through timing, circumstance, blossoming friendships and – perhaps most of all – a desire for community. They love clubs and clubbing but are bored with DJs, and they love bands and gigs but want more vibes – and later set times – from shows.
After five hours of photos and interviews, several group members continue to hang out even when their contributions have finished. As cans keep popping open and the laughter grows louder, it’s clear what a tight-knit bunch they are. “Manchester is the first place I ever felt free,” SILVERWINGKILLER’s Yushang says. “When I landed from Shanghai, it was a really different world. It was like a jungle for me – crazy. But everyone is so nice and people have encouraged me to do the things I’ve never done before, as I never imagined doing something like this.”
Wilkinson beams at the thought of having a likeminded gang of friends united by a shared drive to create something different together. “I couldn’t have predicted or hoped for a better situation,” he says. “I’m so excited to see how far we can push this.”
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