Folly Group

All the way from the big Smoke, Londinium, the new Babylon, the diseased capital of appeased capitalism, Folly Group’s self-produced debut album ‘Down There!’ channels the ever-precarious socio-cultural contexts most have to navigate and taps into the tumultuous terrains of 21st century existences.

A quartet comprised of Sean Harper (vocals, drums), Louis Milburn (vocals, guitar), Tom Doherty (bass) and Kai Akinde-Hummel (percussion, drums) there’s a swathe of sounds on display, a panorama of post-rock progression (in art and heart) combined with double-drumbeating that expertly effects feelings of space and effortlessly affects healings of place. Throughout there’s a foreboding sense of malevolence, menace and mystery. However, it’s not ‘all’ doom and gloom, Folly Group construct a dystopicalian terror firma where slipping and sliding, tripping and hiding is all part of the pleasure. What doesn’t kill ya …

Following the acclaimed EPs ‘Awake And Hungry’ (2021) and ‘Human And Kind’ (2022) and critically received live performances, the foursome craft ‘even more’ wiry, wending, genre-bending in the manner of The Pop Group and Gang of Four’s politicking (Big Ground’), the (discor)dance-smarts of Talking Heads and Young Knives (‘Strange Neighbour’) and the paranoiac dubterranea of Massive Attack and Tricky (‘Nest’). However, Folly Group only loosely remind of these touchstones, they do not lazily contrive to derive.

Over ten songs the group tackle the perils of metropolitan (barely) living where cost and price mean more than hard money, internal collapses (psychic and structural), the spills and thrills of personal (h)interzones, how residual resentment is simply evidence of a relinquishing of the reins of self-control and how artistry and creativity is forever juggling and struggling to stay afloat amongst the opulence and flatulence of the frivolous few with their access all areas arrogance. It all amounts to a heady brew, a sonic stew: a site of eroding pasts, the sight of a manic-panicked present and the zeit of premonitory future(s). A prism-schism.

Din-opener and scene-setter ‘Big Ground’ is a collective clarion call, a gang vocal manifesto that supplements the impending noise of mayhem and the upending poise of ‘Obey Them’. Ignorance is remiss.

‘East Flat Crows’ is frenetic, kinetic and splenetic all at once with the back-and-forth vocals evoking the droll deliveries of the long-gone yet never forgotten The Rakes’ Alan Donohoe with the surrounding cacophony creating a mantric miasma, a hypnogogic hell-whole.

‘I’ll do what I can’ is Hüsker Dü do goth, a screeching-screed outlining the emotionally draining tug of war when relations break down and a grudge becomes a permanent neuro-nudge. Does forgiving facilitate ‘giving in’? As the saying goes “You can bury the hatchet, but, never forget where you buried it.”

Pulse-taking, impulse-making, convulse-aching, this is an abrasively reassuring experience. When pop culture in 2024 despairingly continues to see the constipated warblings of Britpop bungalow Liam Gallagher’s cursory rhymes as worthy of attention the likes of Folly Group are a fundamental panacea.

Ones to catch, watch, listen and witness. Imbibe at will. Or pay the price.