UK band SCALPING hail from Bristol, and you can definitely feel the influence of that city's '90s trip hop scene (Portishead, Massive Attack, Tricky) in their intense, dark, heavy, beat-forward sound. But they draw from a wide variety of influences, including techno, industrial and alt-metal, for a unique aesthetic that they present not only in their music but also in their graphic design and videos. Their debut album, Void, is out today (read our review) and you can listen to that below. They've also just released a video for "Caller Unknown" that uses the mysterious, creepy cube from their album art. Watch that below as well.
We asked the band to tell us about the inspirations behind Void, and their list includes some music (including Deftones and Factory Floor), movies, art and more. Read their list and commentary below.
SCALPING - 10 INFLUENCES BEHIND THEIR DEBUT ALBUM 'VOID'
Howling Owl’s New Year New Noise parties We were lucky enough to live in Bristol at the same time the visionary label Howling Owl was operating. They threw five of these New Year, New Noise events where the lineups were seemingly a mish mash of completely disparate genres, but it always worked. Made us realise that art can come from the same place and ‘feel’ the same even if on the surface it looks or sounds completely different.
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Nicolas Winding Refn's' films Only God Forgives and The Neon Demon Amazing use of colour and composition to create a lurid atmosphere. In his own words "make it dirty, unique, interesting, never seen before and violent."
Deftones Collectively probably our favourite band, how they’ve evolved over the last couple of decades is immensely inspiring. I always marvel at their ability to make music that spans such a vast range of emotions, whilst always being recognizably them.
Akira Most of the images for Scalping at least have some of their genesis in Akira, from futuristic cities to body horror to themes of the apocalypse.
Lena Willikens We've learnt a lot about the importance of patience and space from Lena through her radio shows, often consisting of dub, post-punk and strange percussive excursions. When I saw her play in Bristol for Crack Magazine, Lena kept the tempo slow until about 1am, by this point the audience were gagging for something faster and the primal energy of the crowd was palpable. It was amazing to see a crowd riled up like that at such a slow tempo, at peak time.
Spring Breakers I’ve never seen a film so woozy and hypnotic, much more of an experience than a story.
Factory Floor I saw Factory Floor play an instore gig at Rise Records in Bristol in 2013 without knowing anything about them and it completely blew my mind. I couldn’t get my head around how they were performing that music so effortlessly.
Daniel Avery - Drone Logic Probably one of the first ‘techno’ artists where we got obsessed with an album as a whole. You can tell he has a background in rock and guitar music and that massively appealed to us as we felt we were coming from the same place.
Maciej Kuciara An incredible motion designer and concept artist who worked on Ghost in the Shell, Avengers, Last of Us, and was personally picked by Ridley Scott to create artworks for Blade Runner 2049. But it's his personal work that's most interesting, where he bridges the gap between anime and 3D.
Code Orange A metal band not scared of upsetting the purists or gatekeepers, combining crushingly heavy metal and hardcore with elements of industrial music and modern electronic production techniques.
