![]() ![]() “We never really understood the concept of time off. “We were knackered after being on tour and straight into recording for 10 years,” Hastings recalls. The ‘Cocoa Sugar’ touring schedule was preceded by a relentless cycle of live shows and recording sessions that left the group feeling like a serious break was needed. This care for their craft also involved the realisation that they had to take some time away from each other. We care about the record, we care about the visuals, we care about everything we’re involved in.” You have to put egos aside because we all genuinely want the best record. But when we sorted out the playlist, it was like, ‘Alright, this one just works better for the greater good of the album’. presented a new version and I didn’t like it - in my head, it just wasn’t right. ![]() Massaquoi chips in: “You need to get away from that and be like, ‘Does that work?’ There was a version of ‘Tell Somebody’ that was more modern, more forward-thinking, and I preferred that… but when we started listening to the record, it was like there was another feeling that was missing. ![]() “With certain songs we all thought, ‘We can’t take this off the record because it’s a great song’. “Everything’s a battle or a conversation in some way with us,” says Hastings. The record is the product of a lengthy creative process with conflict at its core: whittled down from an initial 40 tracks using a method that involved creating playlists of songs that best suited certain moods, the final result was only achieved after some brutal edits and constant clashes of opinion. This idea shines through throughout ‘Heavy Heavy’, a richly-textured 10-track collection that blends haunting yet lyrically simplistic group vocals with jangling folk instrumentation, vibrant live drumming and pensive moments of spoken word. I wanna feel, experience and then move on.” “I don’t want to painstake and dissect exactly what it means. “Making music, I just wanna feel, that’s it,” Bankole notes. NME meets Young Fathers on an icy day in south London at their record label’s HQ, but the band seem warm and energised as they excitedly discuss an album they’re clearly very proud of. The sense of density that’s created by this mix is what gives ‘Heavy Heavy’ its name - the record is an experience, and one to be savoured. It’s the act of doing that’s the most important thing.” That process of expelling energy has helped create an album that, according to Massaquoi, is “steeped in humanity”, immersing the listener in a cacophony of energetic percussion, synth noise and a majestic use of the human voice as instrumentation. “We need to record quickly and that spontaneity needs to be captured. “There’s a space and time where you allow yourself to expel whatever the fuck is happening, whatever you’ve soaked up and absorbed in the space since the last ,” Hastings explains. But when it came to ‘Heavy Heavy’, there was no such intention. 2018’s ‘Cocoa Sugar’, however, featured a more linear, stripped-back sound as the group implemented “a strictness and a certain kind of goal” during the recording process. Their provocatively-titled 2015 follow-up ‘White Men Are Black Men Too’ further developed Young Fathers’ complex blend of murky and sometimes discordant electronic ideas, afrobeats rhythms, soulful group chanting and rap. Their unique sound has been on the receiving end of seemingly endless praise: their first two mixtapes, ‘Tape One’ and ‘Tape Two’, gained widespread acclaim and laid the foundations for their debut album ‘Dead’ to win the 2014 Mercury Prize. Hastings formed Young Fathers in 2008, they’ve strived to foster a spontaneous creative approach that mirrors the expressive, communal feel of their live shows. “Being in an environment where everyone is singing along and present… it’s infectious,” says Kayus Bankole, pondering the importance of capturing that “communality” in their music.Įver since Bankole and childhood friends Alloysious Massaquoi and G. That feeling is present throughout ‘Heavy Heavy’, the fourth LP from the Edinburgh trio which continues to stretch the hazy boundaries of modern pop music. A wild visual explosion of flailing bodies and roaring flames, its climax depicts a circle of dancers who are transfixed by a raging fire pit the track’s feverish choral chanting adding to this deep sense of the primal and a connection with a kind of ancient tribalism. An irresistible carnal energy courses through the music video for Young Fathers’ single ‘I Saw’. ![]()
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