Artist Spotlight: Slimy Bench talks discovering joy and sonic individuality
“Live, laugh, love folks, and find that certain joy like no other.”
Photo by Alexander Amin. (Left to right) James Devine, George Riley, and Ruby Campion
One month after the release of their debut EP, Joy Like No Other, we caught up with Brighton trio Slimy Bench’s George Riley as they gear up for a pair of shows on their home turf.
How are you doing and how are you gearing up for your shows this month?
Feeling fresh and chipper to gig once more after our holiday break! We have two gigs this month, one at the Prince Albert on the 17th January, our last gig was at the Prince Albert headlining, so it'll be fun to return with Every Face Becomes A Skull and Grunt Work who are great!
As well as one at Green Door Store on 29th January with Outback, Chub and Ragdoll— a fundraiser for Shelter that will feature a live painting from our lovely friend Maria Biernacka! It has been a venue we've longed to play for a long while, so some very exciting stuff happening this month.
Preparations include feeling awfully frightened and rehearsing also, I guess.
Tell us a bit about yourselves and the inspiration behind your music!
We're a trio that met in Brighton, formed in October 2022 and we make music for the devious and the sad. Lyrically, I take a pretty poetic approach inspired by Sadie Dupuis and Frances Quinlan, and performance-wise was heavily inspired by Lambrini Girls in the early stages of our band. Our sound itself takes inspiration from so many places it'd be strenous to read.
A lot of things that influence us do so in a very passive way, we're not particularly trying to be anyone except ourselves, we put a lot of faith in the fact that whatever we create won't be necessarily derivative of anything.
Genre wise, we range from indie-pop to shoegaze to post-punk, but to summarise it as a word I'd just describe it as intense, emotionally, sonically and physically. Yet simultaneously frail, if possible.
Congrats on your first EP! How does it feel to have launched it to the world?
Thank you so much. It feels euphoric and evokes feelings of warmth and bubbles internally! It's amazing to have released music, and we've been honoured with the warm response from everyone. It still feels odd to see that people actually listen to us now and have heard our songs and would probably be able to recognise it if it came on. Quite glad though, as it was a very strenous process for primarily Archie Sagers.
The EP is called Joy Like No Other. Could you tell us a bit about what this means to you? What does ultimate joy look like?
It's something of an ironic title as all of the songs are about pretty moody topics. It's also a lyric in Paradox, our lead single. However it's all about trying to overcome these moody topics so joy like no other to me would be reaching the other side beyond that all. We welcome all interpretations of what that can mean to anyone, who am I to gatekeep joy?
Live laugh love folks, and find that certain joy like no other.
You recorded the EP in Brighton with Archie Sagers. What did the recording process look like and what sort of things were inspiring you at the time?
We recorded it back in March on University of Sussex's campus, with only 4 gigs under our belt. I feel as though we've grown so much since then. It's really just an authentic portrayal of us as a band as all songs were written before going into the studio and we just kind of went through it with Archie pretty efficiently.
He was a massive help to us, considering the fact that we didn't really have any experience recording. The process itself was very swift though, we pretty much tracked it all in 2 days, with an additional day of overdubs in like June (like one more vocal take and a tambourine hit on Boa).
Mix wise, some of the things we cited were Ash, Speedy Ortiz and Pavement although we were pretty much happy with anything to make it sound as good as possible, and we had a lot of faith in Archie in being able to do it start to finish for us.
The EP seems to change pace into your softer track, Send The Boa Up. It’s a really intriguing tune, and I also hear it’s the first song you ever wrote as a band. Could you tell us more about this one?
We're really proud of how that song came out. It came together before Ruby had even joined us as a band, although I must add that their bassline is absolutely theirs as all are. It went through a lot of changes over time.
I keep my words compact within the track itself there was so much tweaking that it's pretty much an entirely different song than when I sat down and wrote it.
We love writing softer tunes, it really sparks up the earholes of them indie kids. I don't necessarily only see us as a punk band, so having songs like that in our discography not only has a different way of approaching these themes sonically but allows genuine freedom in where we can go next.
And who knows! We might even have more mellow tunes in the vault itching to be free.
What’s coming up next for you?
We should be recording some more songs this year, ideally, hopefully. Perhaps a about a bad hookup, perhaps a song about mauling seagulls, perhaps a song about dysphoria, who knows! It's all hypothetical. Beyond that, just staying slimy.
Other than yourselves, who else should our readers be listening to this month?
My personal recommendations have gotta be: ELLIS-D, Mary In The Junkyard, Ladylike, Mindframe and Flooding.
Tickets for Slimy Bench’s show alongside Every Face Becomes a Skull and Grunt Work on 17th January are on sale now.