Photo courtesy of Poppy Productions Limited

From the beginning, it was evident that brothers Harry and Jimmy Morris had an infinite amount of common interests with Chris Bourne. The live music scene of London brought them together, and they quickly realized that their individual skills and work ethic would be stronger when combined. This is how The New Twentys was formed.

“We actually started writing together without a clear reason, but very soon we all became equally invested in the music and had no choice but to form a band,” they said.

Their sound was born from a trip down the coast where they set up a no-distraction space at Bourne’s brother’s home in Cornwall. They all had a hand in recording and programming, and quickly established that this project would be an entirely independent venture.

Being independent artists has given them the opportunity to manage every aspect of the band, which has also challenged them both as musicians and individuals. From the basics of scheduling a song release to the intricacies of the industry, they have delved into as much as they can to give their audience the best of their talents.

With new skills under their belt, such as planning promotional shoots and scheduling digital campaigns, it becomes even more rewarding to see the final product.

The perfect example of a successful campaign is with their current single, “Dancing On A Sunday”. The song was inspired by a conversation they had with comedian Jimmy Carr at a Halloween party, where he said, “All these girls are doing tracks like ‘I kissed a girl and I liked it’ but no guys have come out with ‘I can’t think straight when I’m with you’…you can have that for free.”

The conversation was brought up a few days later when they were back in Cornwall for another writing trip. They picked up an acoustic guitar and sat in the kitchen as a rough idea started to form. The story they wanted to tell was about a homosexual boy who grew up in a religious household and how it - wrongly - complicated his upbringing. By the morning, the first demo was complete.

It was an important topic they wanted to cover in their music, as it is a topic that Bourne experienced secondhand. A friend from secondary school and sixth form confided in him that they were scared to come out and had many preconceived worries about revealing their true identity to their family and friends.

“I think he was worried about what I would think about it too, to an extent, but to be honest I think I already kind of knew that he was that way inclined,” Bourne said. “It didn’t make a difference to me whether he was straight or not. After hearing about how he felt and everything that was going through his head at the time, it became very apparent how heavy this whole idea of coming out had become for him and I remember thinking it wasn’t fair at all. Society shouldn’t have had that effect [or] impact.”

Since releasing “Dancing On A Sunday”, the track is currently on rotation on X-Posure with John Kennedy and has also received support from BBC Radio, Idobi Radio and SiriusXM. By taking the time to ensure each aspect of the song had their full attention, the band found themselves releasing a track that is equal parts heart and soul.

In many ways, Victory Kicks has been making lockdown records for years. It’s always been primarily a home recording thing, so whilst other projects I was involved with came to a sudden halt last year, Victory Kicks was the one thing that could carry on. I’m really grateful for that; music has always been an escape. Last year that became more essential than ever. Working on a new record during lockdown also gave me something to structure my time around, as a result I can still just about remember what day it is.

The start of the first lockdown in the UK coincided with the release of the 6th Victory Kicks album, Lovers in Peacetime. The original plan had been to play a bunch of shows in support of that record, which was probably the happiest I’d been with a finished album so far. In the end none of that could go ahead. Instead, I used the time we’d have spent rehearsing to write a new record. The songs I came up with during the first couple of months of the pandemic were starting to help me make sense of what was going on; I didn’t set out wanting to write about lockdown, but I wanted the songs to evoke the mood of it, and to translate how it felt into a sound.

I did a lot of the writing for the new record late at night, staying up watching TV and playing guitar, taking lines or ideas from the stuff I was watching and the stories people were telling. A lot of the stuff I’d done previously had started with quite fully formed instrumental arrangements that I’d written words to, but this time the songs came together first - just simple stripped down solo things, playing guitar and singing along to a drum machine late at night. I tried to retain that mood when I started recording them. Many of these songs are darker and more sparsely produced than previous Victory Kicks stuff.

I recorded these songs with a very minimal setup at home. I had it in mind that I wanted the production to be really stripped back and that the equipment I was using should be paired back to the absolute essentials. I recorded everything in my flat with just a small amp, a mic, a laptop, a synth and that’s pretty much it. Rather than using a lot of effects or doing a lot in production, I tried to push those few things as far as I could to get the different sounds and textures, doing stuff like playing synths through overdriven guitar amps, playing mobile phone signals through guitar pickups, recording house sounds and looping them. The end result is a record that is both atmospheric and intimate.

I’m hoping that by the time the new album comes out later this year that there’ll be a chance to play these songs in front of people. I’m fine working on music the way I’ve been doing it during lockdown but I’d love to see how these songs work live. There are songs on the record that are absolutely made for that - the lead single, “Mookie Betts”, is one of those for sure.

John, vocalist: A global pandemic is definitely not one of those things you expect to impact your life, be it personally or artistically, but in early 2020, there we all were making it up as we went. Myself and Todd Long, my partner in Ghosts of Sunset, started making records in an era where you literally had to have everyone in a room to get a take because it all went down to two stereo tracks! Had we faced COVID-19 then, everything would’ve simply ground to a halt. As much as many people curse recording technology with screams of, “Tape only, live to tape only, no overdubs” etc., the pandemic taught us just how lucky we truly were for all the advances technology has made in our business.

So, as we watched our ability to tour and play live stop completely, we embraced technology and went on recording new music, performing via livestream and collaborating with artists all over the world. It kept us working, and God knows it kept us sane. File sharing, live events on social media, other digital interactions only served to reinforce what so many of us already knew, ART IS LIFE.

From the earliest days of the global lockdown when we saw citizens singing on their balconies to keep spirits high, to some truly behind-the-scenes live streaming where we saw the biggest artists in the world present their music in intimate stripped down settings, the COVID-19 pandemic shone the brightest of lights on the value and the indispensable role music and art play in uniting human beings.

For Ghosts of Sunset, writing, recording and collaborating, in addition to signing a record deal with Golden Robot Records (which was done completely via Zoom and email), brought much needed normalcy to a world that, at times, especially here in the United States, wobbled and felt like any minute it could collapse in on itself. On a daily basis we were exposed to the worst of the human race and the absolute best. It influenced and continues to influence our work and undoubtedly the work of others. No artist will ever create with the same mindset again. We know how quickly it can be taken away.

As we look to our future, and begin our first steps back out into the world, we now carry a newfound sense of purpose. The interaction between a band and its fans has always been an important one, but now those moments are even sweeter after we’ve been without them. Social media and other online outlets have closed the gap between artist and fan and created an even closer, more intimate relationship. We’ve now helped each other through one of the most difficult times in history.

You can lock us down, you can confine us to our individual homes, but the caged bird always sings. COVID-19 just proved to all of us what a beautiful, important song it is.

Romeo, vocalist/guitarist: It’s been a very particular period. Being in a band during a time of quarantine, it’s like a challenge you have to face. First, the tours were cancelled. We were supposed to have our third European tour and our first US tour. It was hard to see all this work, all these plans, slowly disappearing... But then, we had to face it. To find new ways, new paths to spread our music to the world.

We’ve been in our recording studio almost every day, but not only that, we tried to develop our communication - contacts with radios worldwide. We had to do something to exist.

In the middle of the night in April 2020, I had this melody in my head coming at 2 a.m. I woke up, took my guitar and started to sing it and create it.

The day after, I played it to my drummer Vince, and this is how our last release, “Escape”, came to life. We wanted to express through music and a (homemade) music video the struggle we’ve all been living during quarantine. For some people, it was a physical struggle; the fact of being locked up in small spaces. For others, it was a psychological fight. We all need to escape reality a bit from time to time, especially when daily life is getting complicated. This song reflects what we felt during this period. Tough moments, good moments.

But, we also had the time to finish our album to come, called For Tomorrow, and to prepare the release of a new EP, (Be)For Tomorrow. Since we’re not back on tour, we cannot properly release our album and defend it on stage. But, we wanted to give something to our audience to wait before the album, and so this idea of an EP came naturally.

I think we have all learned something during this year. To always see above the horizon line, above the storm and the clouds. We kept on working six days out of seven. Trying to create, trying to have new ideas, new projects. The world won’t stop spinning. So we had to keep on moving forward.

We’re slowly starting to book tours again so we really hope we will meet you on the road. We miss you!! So until then, please take care and be safe.

With love, Romeo

What a year it has been. As a working musician, I guess the prep of playing and writing at home hasn’t changed dramatically but the change in collaborating and meeting up with other musicians has definitely been missed, almost as much as not being able to play live. I have missed that so very very much.

A typical day this last year has revolved around playing guitar, taking a daily walk and Zooming friends and family.

One might think that playing on a daily basis and writing would have been quite straightforward, but in reality, pushing yourself to do it without the goals and incentives of playing live at times has been a struggle. I’m lucky to have a supportive partner who has helped and made staying positive easier than it otherwise could have been. I’ve also been lucky that in the break between tiers last summer I was able to get down to London and record some of the songs I’d been working on. A visit to the studio wasn’t just a cathartic experience; it also reminded me of why I love doing this job so much. Working with friends at The Animal Farm helped to put things into perspective, and meant I had songs to release.

When putting this together, I tried to consider whether the last year’s experiences have fed into my writing and I think it has. I’ve been more conscious about how fragile things can be. The single I released last November, “We Are One”, is about this fragility and challenges that can catch us out.

Whilst I’ve steered away from doing gigs online this last year, I did do a challenge of playing a cover song every day last June. This was not just great fun, having to learn the track, actually first and foremost deciding which tracks to play, but also resulted in people who wouldn’t have connected with me previously looking into what Christopher Taylor’s music is all about. I’d like to hope that this helped in making my music more accessible.

My latest single, “By My Side”, written and recorded in lockdown, is out now. Why not check it out and let me know what you think. I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to play it live this summer, all being well!

Photo courtesy of Sara Lincoln

When singer/songwriter Matt Belmont found some down time in 2014, he dedicated nearly two years to developing his songwriting technique. He experimented with new sounds, found inspiration in the French alps and ultimately began the project Belle Mt.

Belmont has described the project as ‘an ever-evolving concept’, meaning its sound will grow and change without being defined by old tropes. The core of the project will always be himself and longtime collaborators Chris Burgess and Ben Worsley, and right now they’re in a stage where they are still establishing a cohesive foundation.

“...On occasions where a song may be best served by just myself and a guitar then that’s how I’ll create it,” Belmont said. “If it’s best as the three of us plus a choir then that’s what we’ll try to do. It’s about serving the music in a fluid, evolving way more than serving our own egos.”

From the inception of Belle Mt. to today, Belmont thinks his biggest discovery has been the power of collaboration.

“Surrounding yourself with incredible people who share your vision can really help you to grow and to be the best that you can be as an artist,” he said. “A lot of people try to do it all themselves so they can claim what they create 100% but I’ve found that it doesn’t have to be a choice of collaborate or go totally solo; I still write alone often and when I collaborate I create extra songs that I’d have never created alone. It’s a bonus and you learn a lot about yourself by letting others in.”

Belmont recognizes all the incredible and unique aspects that Burgess and Worsley bring to the project, as well as their producer, Grammy award-winning Femke Weidema. Burgess, he said, has that perfectionist gene that helps the songs become the best version they can be. Worsley uses his emotions to deeply connect with each song and is one of the most loyal people Belmont has ever met. Weidema has the ability to envision a song from a wide perspective, even in its early stages, and is confident in her decisions.

Their latest collaboration has actually been a partnership - a deal with Warner Records. It was one that Belmont spent time deliberating but in the end felt like it was the right decision.

“I believe that the people I work with [at Warner Records] understand what Belle Mt. is about and can help us to get this music heard by way more people,” he said. “They’ve only convinced me further as they’ve tried to support and facilitate what we do and I’m very grateful for that. Any relationship I start in this industry - label or otherwise - I go into it hoping that it’s going to be good for everyone in the long term.”

Their latest single, “The Way A Young Heart Breaks”, was Belmont’s attempt to distill the feeling of a first heartbreak in a little more than three minutes.

“I woke up one morning in Nashville thinking about that period when I was young and hurting and I realized how much that had shaped me and caused a big shift in my direction, leading me to where I am today,” he said. “There’s a tendency to dismiss the feelings of teenagers as though they are less important or less valid but I think it’s often the opposite. You’re less guarded as a teenager and you aren’t jaded by life yet, so you feel things so viscerally in those years and scar deeper.”

He crafts his lyrics as a way to document his personal life experiences and heal himself in the only way he knows how, which can also been seen in his previous single, “Famous Son”. He just released an acoustic version that shares new feelings to those powerful lyrics.

Belle Mt. is a project that isn’t afraid of the barriers of genre or sound, surrounded by solid relationships and an overall love for creation. As the project evolves, so do the people involved, and that is what makes for the best music.

Lynn Zubernis has had an unusual career progression, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.

She is a trained clinical psychologist, who has worked for many years in school and treatment center environments. In her spare time, she and a group of girlfriends get together and share something they have enjoyed watching recently. One day in 2005, one of them shared the first season of a new show called Supernatural. She wasn’t immediately hooked, as her friend had been, but binged the whole first season with that group and would have it on as background noise as season two aired live on then-network The WB.

Cut to episode two of season two, titled “Everybody Loves a Clown”. Main characters Sam and Dean Winchester stand beside each other as they give their father’s remains a “hunter’s burial”. Sam wants to know if their father said anything before he died, and the internal battle Dean faces is apparent as he openly lies to his brother. Zubernis was supposed to be grading papers, which by then had fallen out of her lap while the red pen dangled from her fingers. Suddenly, the show she felt obligated to watch for her friend’s sake was much more than that.

Up until that point, Zubernis had never been part of a fandom. Sure, she had been a fan of shows such as The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but suddenly she found herself in a community of creative people that she never knew existed. At the same time, she was learning that her own field of psychology had little to no research on fandom studies. Between her and her friend Katherine Larsen, they found nearly every piece of research published on fandoms and conducted their own research to create what is now their first book, Fandom at the Crossroads: Celebration, Shame and Fan/Producer Relationships.

It took a few years for the book to get published, for several reasons. First, they had two very different disciplines: Zubernis in Psychology and Larsen in English Literature. That meant that their research styles were completely dissimilar, and they had to find a medium that worked best for them.

“We had to struggle through all the ethical issues and how were we going to do this research and how much were we going to anonymize and how that is going to be possible, because the fandom community is a marginalized community that's often stigmatized,” Zubernis said.

Once they had all of that in place, they had to find a publisher. They found it difficult to pitch the book because not only was fandom studies still a new topic, but they wanted their book to appeal to both academics and fans. Academic publishers found the book ‘too readable and pop culture based’ while popular publishers told them that the topic was not something the average person would read. It didn’t help that Supernatural was still a relatively new show, with more of a cult following than a mainstream one.

In the end, both were wrong.

A small publisher in the United Kingdom took a chance on them, and soon enough it was in the hands of Henry Jenkins, a scholar who focuses on transmedia storytelling and convergence culture. With his stamp of approval, Zubernis and Larsen continued to research and develop more fandom study books.

Photos by Chris Schmelke

The second book, Fangasm: Supernatural Fangirls chronicles their journey in the fandom and how making that transition from fans who sat in the audience to fans who sat backstage was a challenge.

“We live in interesting times.”

Have you heard this before? You could also replace “interesting” with “strange”, “unprecedented”, “unusual”, “challenging” and a few other adjectives of your choice, and you’d probably be right. Before the pandemic I had a pretty full-on schedule that involved writing, recording and releasing music, and playing said music in live music venues. A lot of that changed over the course of the past year, but we’re slowly getting back to normality.

The other week, for instance, it was great to be able to go out and play a couple of gigs. On the Saturday of that week I had the day off, so I was free of all commitments and distractions. I spent an extra couple of minutes in bed, and when I finally got out, I went on a run. I find that being active is key to my creative process because it affords me valuable time to (1) consume content and (2) generate ideas. When I go running/walking I tend to listen to music, podcasts or audiobooks about half the time, and for the other half, I keep my ears unplugged to allow me to cogitate my thoughts. 

Photo courtesy of Rich Smith

“It's funny how life is in charge. You think you can control it but it comes along and calls the shots.”

At the beginning of 2020, Mother Mother was ready to take a well-deserved break. When that break turned into the majority of the world shutting down for months at a time, they knew that they needed to find something productive to pass the time.

Frontman Ryan Guldemond prefers time spent alone. Although this alone time was different, he recognized that there were truly no distractions.

“When you're afforded that time and space to focus inward or to focus creatively, you can do some great work both on yourself but also within your craft,” he said.

What came out of focusing on his craft was Inside, a 14-track LP responding to the current state of the world.

“It is a record that was really pertinent to the times and one that we couldn’t make ever again,” he said. “Whether or not it's our best, that doesn't matter; what's important is that it's unique to the timeframe that it was created.”

He goes on to say that they were much better off having written this record than having taken time off. It pushed them to try something new, and gave them a new energy to keep doing what they love.

“I believe that energy is the fuel for creativity, especially potent emotional energy, and there's so much of that swirling around the world last year,” Guldemond said. “Whether or not it's troubling energy or positive energy, I think it's all transmutable and it's all conducive to creativity. So while certainly it was a troubling set of circumstances last year, I think it was a good catalyst for songwriting.”

What came out of focusing on himself was his way of listening. Nowadays, he finds himself listening more deeply to the sounds around him. There was such a quietude last year that made his ears perk up to the music of nature and refined his ability to listen deeply. It relates back to Inside, which speaks of finding peace and self-acceptance.

As the world moves back to a sense of normalcy, the more eager musicians are to get back to touring. For Guldemond, he loves the clear and simple formula that touring provides.

“You wake up and you sculpt your day in a way that conditions you to give the most you can give later that night,” he said. “It's very simple and it's very repetitive but it's very profound because every night you have this opportunity to connect deeply with people in a room through the vibration of music, and you never do it perfectly.”

Life calls the shots, and for Mother Mother, they are more than happy to see what life throws at them next.