FEATURE: Spotlight: Melt Yourself Down

FEATURE:

Spotlight

IN THIS PHOTO: Kushal Gaya and Pete Wareham of Melt Yourself Down

Melt Yourself Down

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WHEN there is not a great deal happening in terms…

PHOTO CREDIT: The Line of Best Fit

of big album releases or major music news, I am focused on newer acts coming through. Over the coming weeks, I want to spotlight great artists that are primed for big things. One such act that has been turning my head are Melt Yourself Down. Their new album, 100% Yes, has just come out, and it is a fantastic thing! I have been hearing one of the album’s singles, Crocodile, on BBC Radio 6 Music, and I really like it! It is juddering and fast; it is hooky and catches you in, yet it sounds like nothing else out there. Founded in 2012, and fusing North African musical styles, Punk, Jazz and Funk, the band’s last album was 2016’s Last Evenings on Earth. Before I go on, I want to take a little from the band’s (the band includes Pete Wareham, George Crowley, Dave Smith, Ruth Goller, Kushal Gaya, Satin Singh and Leafcutter John) Facebook biography. With associated acts like Sons of Kemet, and The Comet Is Coming blazing a trail, what does one get from Melt Yourself Down?

“In an unassuming leafy South London street, Pete Wareham’s sonic sanctuary is enabling London six-piece Melt Yourself Down to create their most vital music yet. The sax innovator’s home studio merges both futurist thinking and time-honoured tradition. Here, state-of-the-art recording equipment sits beneath wall hangings with Tibetan designs — and, essentially, his two treasured saxophones. He produces these with a flourish: huge, hulking things with oxidised patches that look as if they’ve been exhumed from the long-forgotten closet of a roaring 20s jazz club (in fact, they’re only a few years old). “You can have shiny ones that you put lacquer on,” Pete explains, holding a weathered-looking baritone sax. “Or you can have no lacquer, which I think gives you more character, and you have to forge your own sound.”

The desire to create new sonic pathways is an integral philosophy to Melt Yourself Down, whose two critically-lauded albums to date have alchemised influences from noisy No Wave to Nubian rhythms to create an eclectic and pan-global kind of party-punk. But their epochal third album 100% YES (released on the band’s new label Decca) is their strongest statement yet, representing both a peak of musical synthesis for the band as well as a personal triumph.

“After the second album, Melt Yourself Down was at a crossroads,” says vocalist Kush Gaya. “We left our label, we had no certainties, no life vests and very limited resources, it was a live or die situation. We had to change course, and modify our direction to reflect life beyond just the musical concepts and ideas that we had before. The answers soon came as we started looking within ourselves rather than looking out. By starting a process of finding out who we were as people, and how we related to the world around us, we found the music!” Pete agrees: “We had to deepen our process, which we did,” he says. “We really started working on this towards the end of 2016, so loads of shit was happening — Brexit, Trump.”

The result is songwriting with an unflinching focus on the pressing realities of life in Britain today. “Born in the Manor” takes on the Grenfell tragedy amidst looming synths and staccato brass, as Kush’s vocals morph from menacing speak-raps to a desperate wail. Lyrics indict the powers that be whose negligence allowed the West London fire to happen: "Born in the manor / Born in the gutter / For dem it don’t matter / Blacker, whiter, browner / You burn in a tower.” Kush explains: “It’s harrowing. Those lyrics are a shout against the authorities for not really caring whether you're black white or brown”.

I think bands like The Comet Is Coming, and Melt Yourself Down, whilst very different, are not given the same respect and oxygen as a lot of acts in different genres. Splicing Jazz and Avant Garde together, one gets this incredible sound. Melt Yourself Down are, as you can see, unafraid to put politicians and injustices under the microscope. As you can tell from Born in the Manor’s lyrics and the reference to the Grenfell tragedy, Melt Yourself down can balance the serious with the more energetic and playful. Although they have been playing together for a while, I think they are still yet to capture the attention of the upper leagues. They deserve wider appeal and more airplay; their music is some of the very best out there. I will conclude with a review of their album, 100% Yes, but I wanted to bring in an interview from The Line of Best Fit where Kushal Gaya and Pete Wareham talked about their latest album:

“This music has been about alignment too – internally aligning and aligning with each other but then also aligning with all the elements that we’re trying to work with. Now it feels like it’s working in such a way that if something isn’t right, it falls away effortlessly and then the correct thing comes into play.” Part of this uplift has come from letting go of inner pressure. “You don’t have to assert yourself to make something happen,” says Wareham. “You just have to align yourself and that’s the way this has worked.” Gaya agrees enthusiastically: never force anything. “Our writing relationship feels really natural.”

While both musicians have spent years honing their craft in various projects, separately and together, they’ve never once anchored themselves and settled completely. Where other songwriters might seek some semblance of satisfaction, Gaya and Wareham continue to ask questions, to dig, nurture and evolve, finding new sounds for today’s pressing sentiments The notion of being "100% Yes" – of always embracing life in its entirety – not only fed into the creation of their album, but it exists as an everyday maxim for the group. “We had a lot of challenges to make this album happen,” Wareham and Gaya point out. “We’ve had to really change our state of mind. Whenever something bad was coming our way, well, we just had to embrace it. You have to be open to it – 100% yes to all experiences,” explains Gaya. Every step they took on their walks in the wild was purified by song.

I ask them about how their pop music fuses with politics. “We don’t do things on the nose,” Gaya makes clear, “but there’s a lot of sentiment inside the music that resonates with the politics of the moment.” Wareham adds that, besides reflecting the world stage, they also might be looking for the human element in what’s seen as just a news item. “We’re not trying to promote a particular approach politically. If some of the tracks deal with sombre realities, some are energetic and “meant to feel like Saturday night,” Wareham tells me. 100% Yes feels wildly exhilarating, important even, both as a document of contemporary injustices and as an act of breathing fresh new life into the group’s reformation”.

PHOTO CREDIT: The Line of Best Fit

I am just including a few little snippets here and there, but I would recommend people do a lot more digging and go and check out the back catalogue of Melt Yourself Down. This year is going to be a strange one in terms of releases and live performances, so I am not sure what Melt Yourself Down’s plans are for the summer. Regardless, they have 100% Yes out, and it is one of the best albums of this year so far. I will return to The Line of Best Fit, as they wanted to have their say regarding 100% Yes:

“On their third studio album, legendary saxophonist (and jazz-punk band Acoustic Ladyland founder) Pete Wareham and vocalist/lyricist Kush Gaya lead a politically charged manifesto that is at its most powerful becomes a rallying cry or an acerbic, pointed question. “Born in The Manor” might be the most candid example of this. Offering up a more surreal and subdued sound, it holds no punches when it comes to the subject matter as Gaya’s vocals take vitriolic aim at those responsible for Grenfell: "Born in the manor / Born in the gutter / For dem it don’t matter / Blacker, whiter, browner / You burn in a tower.”

Album opener “Boot and Spleen” is, sonically, every bit as joyous as we’ve come to expect from the London six-piece but it too has a dark side inspired by the history of British colonialism in India. Elsewhere stand-out single “Crocodile” explores the terrors of the Russian drug ‘Krokodil’ as a metaphor for youth decay and Gaya’s time in Bristol where he witnessed friends struggle with, and die from, addiction.

All this heartbreak and hardship doesn’t stop the new record bubbling with a hopeful energy born from the meandering psychedelic melodies and looped mantras of the title track, to explosive sax solos to thrashing rhythm sections of “It Is What It Is” that kick the shit out of your ear drums. Everything is potent, everything has purpose. The six-piece have retained a strong sense of the wonderfully free spirit improvisers they are on stage, but with Youth and Ben Hillier on production duties there is a more refined focus to their output. 100% Yes in turn deserves greater focus from the world at large”.

If you are new to Melt Yourself Down or unsure of whether you’ll like them, I would say 100% Yes is a good place to begin. From there, pace your way back and get a real sense of how far the band have come and what they can offer. I do hope they get on the road later this year and manage to reach the people. As I said, I will be featuring more new artists or those that have not had the same celebration as mainstream acts. Do yourself a favour and make sure you get Melt Yourself Down…