So Young Issue Fifty-Seven
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- So YoungIssue Fifty-Seven bar italia Also inside:
- be different he were a blond AdoniHELL OF HEAV
- Page 3Issue Fifty-Seven arrives within what feels like the busiest summer in our history. Festival season isn't quite done, but one band looking fondly beyond this period is bar italia and they're on the cover. Once elusive but now speaking freely with new album 'Some Like It Hot' now announced for release in October, we chat with trio Sam, Nina and Jezmi in Brixton on guitars as a gimmick, singing lessons and the horniness of their new record. Mark William Lewis is one of our favourite discoveries of recent times. The London based singer-songwriter is the first signing to A24 Music and from his 'Bermondsey Triangle' studio we met to discuss Elliott Smith, favourite films and collaborating with MIKE.
- Page 7"When we first spoke she was like "I saw that you wear no shoes on stage, you're gonna get electrocuted, you need to start wearing shoes!" So I went and told my manager "the craziest thing has just happened, Kim Deal has just told me off.” Then there are songs like 'Weekend', which is super sad but I still feel like they're a part of the same world. I do wish I could write happier songs sometimes but like I said honesty is the most important thing for me, so if one day I'm completely ecstatic about everything I might write a song called 'I'm So Happy'! But when I was writing this that wasn't true.
- COMING UPHELLO MARY BY @ANDREIAARTT ACOPIA BEING DEAD GEE TEE .L.A. WITCH
- Page 15J: I don't necessarily feel good about everything creatively, I just force myself to do it. And I guess that's a creative drive. This is the longest time as a bar italia album between the last one though, which is cool. N: Yeah, it took us so long to make it. It's a lot to do with just time pressure knowing that you're gonna be away for a long time. What I was saying about touring, there's a lot of transformation needed from that kind of lifestyle because it is an amazing lifestyle, but it does take a lot and so I guess making music is like a way for us to feel good and it allows us to transform, a lot of stuff that's happened to us in the year before.
- Page 22THIS IS AN ADVERT FOR GANS. THE REASON WE HOPE YOU READ THIS IS THAT YOU WILL LISTEN TO GANS. GANS WANT YOU TO LISTEN TO GANS. GANS WANT YOU TO BUY GANS. THIS IS NOT A TRICK. THIS IS A TRICK. GANS IS ABOUT LOVE AND HATE. GANS MAKE PRODUCTS THAT MAKE YOU LOVE AND HATE. GANS DEMAND A REACTION. GANS IS TRUE LOVE. GANS IS ABOUT UNIFICATION. GANS IS PRO MOTHER NATURE. GANS IS ACID HOUSE. GANS IS ANTI REFORM. GANS IS POETRY. GANS IS TRUE ART. GANS IS POSITIVE VIBRATIONS. GANS IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL. GANS IS COAL NOT DOLE. GANS IS WATCHING THE WORKERS SUFFER. GANS IS NOT JUST MUSIC. GANS IS NIGHTS OUT. GANS IS A REVOLUTION. GANS IS ANTI SOCIAL MEDIA. GANS IS POETRY. GANS IS PRO SOCIAL MEDIA. GANS IS PAINTING. GANS IS ABOUT FRIENDS. GANS IS REAL. GANS IS ALL WE KNOW. GANS IS NOT ABOUT MONEY. GANS WANT YOUR MONEY. GANS IS AN ITALIAN HOUSE PIANO. GANS IS AN INDUSTRIAL NOISE. GANS DEMAND ACTION. GANS DO NOT LISTEN TO PEOPLE. GANS IS METAL BOX. GANS IS NOISE. GANS IS BALEARIC. GANS IS CLOSE YOUR EYES. GANS DO NOT EDIT. GANS IS IMPERFECT. GANS CAN ONLY EDIT. GANS IS ANTI MUSIC. GANS IS MUSIC THAT DOES NOT MATTER. GANS IS THE ONLY MUSIC THAT MATTERS.
- Page 28J: It's funny because we've been doing it for so long that when you get asked a question about the scene now you're like fuck, I'm really not in a position to answer this anymore. I'm not really right in there like I used to be. It's really fun to watch people do really well and to be proud of how we've done off of it. We were at the Fontaines show at Finsbury Park and we saw Been Stellar, Kneecap, Amyl, and Fontaines and I think we'd played with all of them. If not Amyl, then we've definitely hung out with them and been friends with them for a while. So it's really awesome to see these bands play to so many people and to share a journey with them. In terms of it being a scene, it's bigger than comprehension at this point. When we started there were not really many bands in London at all. And since then, its grown and grown and grown. It's funny how you get used to it and it stops being surreal, even though it is still surreal. I think it's cool that it's still growing somehow. And we're supporting Fontaines and reaping the benefits of that! E: As far as it goes in terms of bands like Fontaines, fully, legitimately seeping into the mainstream I think it's fucking awesome. I can't help but feel pride and happiness for those guys, and it's nice to see something genuinely cool and innovative at that level, rather than stuff we've seen in the past. It's been great to see, and I couldn't wish for it to happen to a better band. Not just to focus on them, but the fact that that kind of thing is getting astronomically popular these days fills me with confidence.
- Page 33'Australian festivals have this sort of desert warrior vibe about them. Like everyone's dressed like Mad Max, and every bloke's got his shirt off and they're all really ripped... they look like they're one second of eye contact away from punching you in the face." scene.
- CHRISTOPHER OWENSEARTH THEATRE 06.09
- Page 39R: We made a conscious decision not to leave Glasgow even though we had more gigs in the south; it's just cheaper. We saved up and got a van when we had a few tours booked. We were unbelievably active when we just needed people to see us. Any gig that covered petrol money, we were going to do, no matter what. That helped us in the long run. I don't hear much about what's happening in Glasgow right now. Could you tell me about what the scene is like from your perspective?
- Page 40SOY
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- RUN FOR COVER RECORDSLISTEN TO THE NEW SINGLE, "BEHIND THE CLOCK" NOW. AFIREINSIDE.NET RUNFORCOVERRECORDS.Com Basement
- Page 51"I like films that throw you into a world with its own logic without explaining it to you or holding your hand and you're just in there. That's what an album does. It just throws you into some kind of world without explaining it to you first." It's a great record.
- So YoungPresents ARTS UNIVERSITY BOURNEMOUTH
- We're super excited to be partnering with the ArtsUniversity Bournemouth for a sixth year to select and show off some of 2025's graduates from the Illustration course. The work chosen ranges from 3D printing to children's books and packaging. We caught up with the selected illustrators to get an insight into their work and highlight some of our favourite pieces.
- Macy Conway - @macyconwayartCiara Williams - @ciara.louisew A Harriet Vincent - @harrietillustration
- Page 5857 It's an ancient language, back in the hunter gatherer days we were banging on rocks with sticks and singing and unison enchanting and now it's progressed into, you know, what you see today when people are improvising and we've got like the birth of technology to add and implement all these crazy, nuanced sounds from the universe to like expand the sonic reach, even further and music's always been very spiritual. It's always been healing, and so to be able to transform that through performance and like to do it the justice it deserves is very important to us. So we have to just let ourselves go entirely and let ourselves almost become what we feel in our minds instead of just standing there, playing the guitars and singing or whatever, you know, we have to allow that emotion and that ancient language to flow through us because it's important when we let ourselves go on stage, it allows the audience in turn to let themselves go and then it can become like a unifying subject as opposed to here's a band playing music on stage. Here's a band just playing their songs. You know, it's a lot deeper, it's a lot more emotional, it's a lot more spiritual than that. So we have to do it justice in our performance, so it never started off like that. That has come into fruition, the more that we've realised ourselves and the impacts of our music and the importance of the message. And now all of these things are coming into place at the right time, and we've had years of practice; now we're able to walk on stage and really do the music and the language justice through our performance as well as through the music.
- BLONDSHELL SEPTEMBER 2025LUVCAT NOVEMBER 2025 SHAME NOVEMBER 2025
- END OF59 Nestled on a hilltop in the creases of the Dorset countryside, End of the Road is one of the UK's best small festivals. A hazy weekend of sparse signal and cool, leathery Dorset cider, it takes in the last dregs of summer and encourages encounters with music you might never have otherwise heard alongside festival favourites.
- Page 64N: It's really amazing not to have like five people a show be like, why don't you have drums? R: The only person who ever was like, "Why do you have drums" was Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips [laughs]!
- BEEN STELLARThe new single Always On My Mind
- Big ScaryMonsters ADORE
- Tell us about a typical working dayI usually wake early, stumble into the kitchen and make a black coffee. Annoyingly my studio is west facing so the light is at its best first thing in the morning. I'll get a bit of work done, my assistant Elijah gets in at 11, he's in charge of all my merch and homeware that we design together. Then I'll paint or reply to emails until 6. I might go to the pub with some mates or go to the cinema. I love films. I do most of my work in the day and leave the evenings free, unless I have a deadline then I disappear into my work entirely and no-one hears from me in weeks. How do you keep yourself inspired?
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- Page 77BIRL THE DE Caroline Rose
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There's some good friends that play on it, but it was very much a homespun effort. And I suppose a lot of the synth sounds, the sample brass.. in early video games you had those orchestral sounds, like a mellotron - it's an impersonation of a classical instrument but it's synthetic. I wanted this record to be an impersonation of a band. It's like a fake band. It's a complete illusion.
You've spoken elsewhere about how you're disillusioned with the UK music scene, especially in London. What don't you like about it?
I don't want to be too pointed about it. I don't want to make it a bigger thing than it has to be. As an artist, you often end up in a situation where you are slightly, irrationally, positioning yourself in opposition to something, really as a tool to work out what it is you want to be. I mean it genuinely when I say that this scene is not something that I'm really involved in or spend time listening to. But beyond that, for whatever reason, it helped me in this process to make a delineation between that and what it was I was doing, more out of security than anything. I feel like using it as a fuel was successful, because I do feel like I made a record that uses guitars and songs, but which is sonically and thematically out on its As a musician I'm divided into a few camps. In one way I'm an engineer, in a second way I'm a songwriter, a third way, I'm a producer/sound designer. And to my engineer (or sound design) brain, a lot of music that I've heard, the way in which the sound is presented, it's almost as if the techniques used to record bands have become too good. It's not that I want my music to sound retro, but it's almost as if I'm hearing band recordings, and everything's three dimensional; it's too panoramic, and I can hear the studio in the room. I think that more off-kilter music, or sounds presented more like a collage which contains a multitude of different elements interested me more. So the way I built the record was one-piece at a time. Kind of like Tetris or something.
My impression of the UK scene is that it's highly formalised. It feels like everyone has a record deal. Everyone instantly flocks to the industry and ends up in the same magazines, the same festivals and circumstances.
In a way this scene is described as a 'UK Independent Scene', but to me it doesn't seem independent at all. It's like, if you put the right elements of a band together and you play in south London, you're just entering a stream. I don't want to enter that - I don't want to make too big a deal of it either. I don't want to make it a catchline that I'm rallying against this thing. It's not on my mind most of the time.
There are more ways for music to be heard than just that one pathway. Artists can break through online, through word of mouth. That's the reason I'm here talking to you!
That's what I mean. I just wanted to maintain those independent channels. The group of artists that I'm involved with and who are my friends, meeting those people.... Before, I was really out on my own. I made some records, but I didn't have music friends. I didn't have any context. But I was lucky enough to meet some people who wanted to make music, but they were coming from a different place. It was really the first place I felt at home as a proper musician. Bassvictim, Charlie Osbourne, Mitsubishi Suicide these are all friends foremost, but we all work on each other's music.
What's next for you?
Me and Rowan have pretty much finished the second album. It's mapped up and written but it needs to be finished. I want that to happen as soon as possible. We're on a roll, we have an identity, and we want to push it as far as we can. So yeah, much more music, and shows. I don't know. We take it a day at a time. We see what people offer us, and we say yes or we say no. We just check our instagram DMs and make decisions based on that. Literally!
The second album is kind of like a 'part 2'. It's different for sure, but the idea for the first album...it wasn't enough for me to leave it at that. I need the second album to flush the ideas out of my system. So yeah, more songs. More dub sirens!
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