Album Review: Folly Group - 'Down There!'
Folly Group come out swinging with record rife in complexity and colour.
There's been a genuine ascent from these Londoners over the last year or so. From being A-lister features on 6Music with firm favourites Sand Fight and Fashionista to Joe Talbot-approved, they've since gone on tour with Do Nothing, Orlando Weeks, collaborated with Metronomy and played iconic festivals including the top dogs of Glastonbury and Pitchfork London. They managed to keep up with the momentum by issuing out recent single, Strange Neighbours before heading out on the road again with fellow up-and-comers Geese from across the pond. This was ultimately my introduction to the band when they grabbed that support slot.
A quirky, undulating array of post-punk, dub and trip-hop interspersed with programmed drums alongside the live, I was instantly hooked. Now, their debut comes today with such a trajectory pinned on a momentous year for the four-piece collective.
Curious impressions, finicky percussion and a low-hum simmering of post-punk litters the 10-track debut of Down There! The album lends a genuinely original voice to a familiar theme trounced throughout the sprawling UK alternative scene. Dejection, anxiety, alienation and financial pressures flitter back and forth from I'll Do What I Can to Pressure Pad. This is shown best through the album artwork; portraying a 10-point cave network to the ten most important places in London that ultimately resulted in the album's creation.
Don't be fooled, however. It's not your typical alternative record steeped in just post-punk. Central to Folly Group's record and their sound in general, is the influence to dance music, as it expands to the direct guitar arrangements. The swampy workings of Big Ground and I'll Do What I Can kicks off with a turbulent foray of tart behaviour and angsty outbursts. A panic-stricken Bright Night upholds this tension with a echoic bass line capping off a discussion about life in the big capital.
Pre-single Strange Neighbour is a pure example of where the band are at right now - a catchy off-kilter excursion of slitty guitar arrangement as the warped programmed drums throughout send you down a wormhole. Freeze is a disenchanting thrill of electro-acoustics and janky guitars while Pressure Pad is a grungy-gaze outpouring reminiscent of someone like Television. Nest is an electronic experiment taken from Yorke's King of Limbs seconds, while New Feature sounds much like a post-apocalyptic battle soundtrack cherry-picked for a fighting robot who is very much off season.
A perfect altercation of post-punk, off-kilter alternative and hypnotic electronica (and a beating of Afro-beats thrown in for good measure), comes a highly-anticipated debut from Folly Group of equal measure. What a year they are set to off. It all starts here.
Words by Alex Curle
