New band of the week: Nova Twins (No 119) bass-heavy duo fusing grime and punk
Meet the riot twins bored by sex and cyberspace, in love with bringing punk rock to a new audience
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Hometown: South-east London.
The lineup: Amy Love (vocals, guitar), Georgia South (bass, backing vocals).
The background: Nova Twins are all about that bass: the lurching, grinding, seismically distorted, FX-mangled sound that propels the music of this young London duo: Georgia South, 19, and Amy Love, who is in her early 20s (Tim Nugent, no relation to Ted, adds drums). They call it urban punk but elsewhere their bass-heavy racket with irascible, sharply insinuating vocals has been variously titled hip hop-grime, grime-pop/“grop”, even “grunk”, such is their furious collision of grime and punk. “We are females of colour playing heavy music,” declares Love, who alternately sings (term used advisedly) and raps, with backing squeals from South. “Sometimes we have to shout a little bit louder. We don’t want to be pigeonholed.” Their heroes range from MC5 to Missy Elliott, Skunk Anansie to Skepta, and they get a broad demographic at their increasingly populous gigs, although to date they have attracted more punks and rockers than grime kids.
“Because our sound and delivery is so intense, and because we do it all live, without laptops or any programming, some grime people are put off,” explains Love. “But we want it to be more open – we want diversity in our audience ’cos that’s what we are,” she says of their mixed parentage. “We want guys in snapbacks next to guys with mohawks and nose rings. That would be amazing.”
South was at school with grime MC Novelist while Love attended the British Academy of New Music in east London, where classmates included Ed Sheeran and Rita Ora. On Nova Twins’ Bassline Bitch, from their self-titled debut EP, they threaten: “We’ll slap that look right off your face.” Isn’t Nova Twins’ fulsome metallic racket meant to be a reaction to Sheeran and Ora’s chart pabulum?
“No, they’re two different things,” says a diplomatic Love, who remembers Sheeran as “a nice guy who came up from the underground and does interesting things with loop pedals”. Don’t they have a Year Zero mentality like their spiky-bonced forebears? Aren’t they defined by who they hate? “No,” argues South, who was minus-20 in The Year Punk Broke. “We’re defined by music we love. We don’t want to focus on other people. Grime is the modern-day punk. They don’t give a shit, they create their own scene. It’s very DIY,” she adds, pointing out that their video to Bassline Bitch was shot in 10 minutes, using a cheap Canon, by South’s mum.
Nova Twins are “mentored” by their parents, whose respective backgrounds are as jazz musicians and music teachers. They drive them on tour and get stuck in at gigs – “the dirtier the better,” laughs Love. What do they make of the colourful language and angry attitude? They’re all for it, apparently, especially Bassline Bitch’s underdog anthemia. “We’re saying, ‘Fuck [money], do what you like, make your own movement, shout until you’re heard,” says South. The video for Hitlist – another EP highlight that, like much of Nova Twins’ output, sounds like a warning – captured their spirit of frenzied gratification. “We only had a small budget, and we spent most of it on alcohol for our friends to dance to, to loosen them up – there were a lot of girls standing and screaming. Everyone had a really good time.”
One of punk’s dictums was “I’m bored”. Those very words open Nova Twins’ track Wave. How can anyone be bored in 2016? “The internet? That’s boring,” accuses Love. “It’s just looking at a screen!” Actually, Wave is about sex, famously described by Johnny Rotten as “two minutes and 52 seconds of squelching”. Are Nova Twins even bored by sex? “Sometimes,” they cackle, “sometimes not.”
They rarely if ever “talk about heartbreak – it’s more about anger” and are unlikely to pen a love song any time soon. They’re recording with Pat Collier (X-Ray Spex, Jakwob) and Adrian Hall (Goldfrapp, Anna Calvi) has been mixing their music. They’ve managed to maintain their position even faced with record companies eager to control what they do and how they sound.
“When we were younger and slightly more vulnerable, someone pissed us off, trying to make us sound less live, reduce the power of the bass and make us sound American,” recalls Love. “He was expecting us to be more pop, thinking, ‘That’s a bit heavy.’ So we walked out, and he walked out. But we’re not making music for the record industry, we’re making it for us.”
“People do stereotype us,” adds South. “We’re both mixed [race] and we play guitars, so straight away we get, ‘Oh, you girls are going to be singing some R&B,’ and it’s like, ‘Oh come on, educate yourself!’”
What kind of reactions do they get live?
“Shock,” says Love. “We walk into venues and they expect one thing and we come out the other end doing something else. But it’s not aggressive. People feel liberated and leave with a smile on their face. They’re like, ‘YES! What the fuck is this?!’”
The buzz: “Bad-ass grime-punk.”
The truth: Nova Twins are happening without your permission.
Most likely to: Fuck Your Heart.
Least likely to: Rub the impossible to burst.
What to buy: The self-titled EP is out now. They play at Afropunk London on 24 September and tour throughout the month.
File next to: Voodoo Queens, Daisy Chainsaw, Skinny Girl Diet, Skunk Anansie.
Links: novatwins.com
Ones to watch: Bearstronaut, Hush Moss, Sophie Beem, Abroad, Jean-Michel Blais.
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