Relentlessly ploughing through 2020 with an onslaught of new music, Newcastle-based Twist Helix are gearing up for their second album in November. The post-pop trio released thesingles‘Louder’and‘Frida Kahlo ’earlier this year, and now they’ve unleased their third and final single before the main event. ‘Vultures’ is available to stream and download via Paul Back Music now! We caught up with Twist Helix as they talked about their latest single and more!
First of all, your new single ‘Vultures’, is being released this Friday and is based on the vulnerabilities of working in the music industry and those who prey on your talents and work. What inspired this track and have you, or has anybody that you know had any experiences with these ‘Vultures’?
Hi Original Rock, thanks for taking the time to speak to us about ‘Vultures’. The new single doesn’t pull its punches. Every scene has its share of horror stories; bands getting taken for a ride or being put in positions that they’re not comfortable with. ‘Vultures’ tries capture the essence of the stories swapped backstage about this uglier side of the music industry.
Do you still have to be careful and worry about your work being taken advantage of, even though you are well established in the music industry?
Absolutely, the more invested you are in a project the more you have to lose.
We’re releasing ‘Vultures’ at a time when the industry worldwide is in a sort of meltdown. It’s a disaster yes, but also an opportunity to press the reset button and move away from bad practices. The reality is it’s never been easy to be a musician. When you’re trying to live out a dream and you’re desperate for a glimmer of hope, sadly you’re also quite vulnerable. Music unfortunately has its fair share of creeps and grifters, who frankly we could all do without.
The single is being released in the run-up to your second studio album, ‘Machinery’, how does it feel to have another one out so soon and is there a running theme behind it?
It feels pretty good actually, there’s a lot that we’ve been wanting to say in the two years since the last album and it’s great that we finally have a chance to do it. The new record gives our take on the workings of the music industry good and bad, an honest accounting of the ‘Machinery’ behind it. Where the last album ‘Ouseburn’ was by necessity an unabashed romanticisation of the grassroots, ‘Machinery’ is a much more “warts and all” portrayal of what it is to be engaged in cultural production.
Do you feel like your sound or musical influences have changed much compared since the last album ‘Ouseburn?’
Without a doubt yes, although I think we’d struggle to put into words just how and why that change happened. LP Hartley said that ‘the past is a foreign country’ and people do things differently there, it’s kind of the case for us creatively speaking. You know we couldn’t write the same album as ‘Ouseburn’ if we tried as we were different people then.
In terms of where we’re at now it’s probably fair to say that ‘Machinery’ is the most ambitious collection of songs we’ve worked on as a group. While there’s a little bit of spill over from the last album, in so far as the songs still have that self-reflexive quality to them (pop music about pop music) the two records are coming from very different places in terms of emotions and subject matter and that translates into the music you hear on the record.
So much has changed since the first album with 2020 being such a crazy year, how have you found it working musically through COVID and lockdown, did you struggle for inspiration at all?
Being able to stay engaged creatively really has been our saving grace this year, we honestly don’t know where we’d be without this album to keep us occupied. We have to say a massive thank you to both our Iñaki at Organic Audio and John at Blank Studios who made it possible to continue working on the album between the studios in Spain and the UK during this unprecedented time. The work they’ve both put in really has been incredible.
You always seem to be busy generating new music, did lockdown give you a chance to have a breather or have you still been working?
Oh we’re still working. Without giving too much away, we can confirm there is a music video in the works which we’re all really excited about.
‘Vultures’ varies quite a bit from the last TWIST HELIX single we reviewed, ‘Frida Khalo’. What is it in particular that inspired you to crank up the 80’s electronica and alt-rock in this single?
Well the three of us had a very long discussion as a band about the new album and how to present it in a way that would be consistent with our earlier material, yet still function as a coherent vehicle for the nuanced commentary on artistic production we were trying to convey. We all agreed with what we had discussed and were more or less happy to leave it there until Bazz drank some cans of Amstel and said we should also try sound like a Eurovision Death From Above 1979.
What is brilliant about your music is that there is never any chance for it to get boring! You’re constantly writing your own rules and defying typical genre ‘norms’, can it get overwhelming having such a huge spectrum of sound available and how do you decide which direction to take your sound?
Awh thank you, we’re just glad we can offer up something that’s a little bit different. From our point of view we don’t see any contradictions in the music that we make, those stylistic idiosyncrasies are kind of integral to “our sound”. We always have one constant in terms of the song-writing and that is that the songs are synth driven, and arranged with performance via one workstation in mind but everything else is fair game. For us music is meant to be intuitive, expressive, and most importantly fun, so that’s where we place importance as songwriters. If we like a song then it goes on the record, we’re not trying to chase someone else’s idea of what rock, or pop or synthesizer based music should be.
Do you have anything planned or in the works (depending on the COVID situation) for after the release of ‘Machinery’?
While this year has taught us one or two things about the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, we’re optimistic that we’ll be able to get back out on the road hopefully sometime in the next year. Twisthelix.com for details
What has it been like seeing your popularity grow with coverage from English and Spanish fans, press and radio stations?
It’s been pretty incredible; I mean we’re just so grateful to have had the opportunity to have been able to do this as long as we have. To release music and tour, has been the dream for us and it’s all thanks to a small following of fans we have who actually get what is we’re trying to do. We wouldn’t be here without them.
Give Vultures a listen below!