THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Drawing from post-punk, dub, trip-hop, dance music and traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms, Folly Group have established themselves amongst U.K. 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 singer-drummer Sean Harper and singer-guitarist Louis Milburn. Despite their respectively more abstract and literal styles, the duo 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 U.K. scene with the 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 multiple sources, 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 single I Raise You (The Price Of Your Head). This was followed by a U.K. headline tour and more festival appearances.
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, U.K. jazz and hardcore punk, Milburn had gotten heavily into ’80s artists like Squeeze, The Specials and Joe Jackson. In the production alone, references span Danger Mouse, 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. The 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 bandmembers 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.” Claims Harper: “I’d like it if people felt they were hearing a band that wasn’t resting on its laurels.” Adds Doherty: “I’d like ‘surprise.’ 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.’ ”
