Cruush

Yampy Promotions Presents cruush.

Manchester’s alternative heavyweights,  cruush sound like a manufacturing error of prettiness. Corrosive. Half-melted. Spewing a destabilizing grunginess so intense  it creates a kind of paralysis. Their core IP formed when Amber’s darkwave nursery rhymes of dead-eyed dreamstate met the white-knuckle tension of Arthur Boyd’s elliptical guitar. Running into one another at a “shitty Fresher’s event” the pair retreated to the chromosome of Amber’s room to jam the early tunes that would serve as a helix for the band’s genetic information. Joined by drummer Fotis Kalantzis and bassist Charlie Marriott they’re collectively able to summon songs that rage a cold war on the ears. Their delay mottled ditties propelled by gusts of distortion dissolving into tones muscular enough to administer compound fractures, shifting in out of phase, pluming for miles, drone-laced and magnificent. Broadcasters and journalists alike are enchanted, with the likes of Jack Saunders (BBC Radio 1), Steve Lamacq (BBC 6), John Kennedy (Radio X), Consequences of Sound, The Independent, NYLON, The NME, So Young, The Line of Best Fit, Clash, Rough Trade & Gigwise lining up to call themselves fans.

The pervasive gloaming of Manchester’s suburbs is present in cruush’s sonic DNA. Yet there’s more to their sound, an evolutionary gear shift that has ushered in an airy, somewhat hallucinatory aspect: “it’s like we fed Lowry acid and took him to Thorpe Park.” quips Arthur. While grey, gloomy textures provide a grunge-pop base layer, the melodies and top lines are practically  psychoactive, twitching between nausea and euphoria. A brain-bypass flowstate of guitars, modular synth blups, muscular bass and mournful utterances sung with centimetre-from-your-ear softness. Among the narcotic swirls of psychedelia, Amber’s melodic splendour is antidote-like, stealing attention from the tidal waves of noise with queasy timbres of disillusion, doubt and confusion. After signing to indie darlings Heist or Hit and releasing debut EP ‘Wishful Thinker’, the band decamped to Young Thugs studio in York to record the follow up: ‘Nice Things Now, All of the Time’. “It was great to be working with Jonny at Young Thugs again, it’s basically like hanging out with a 5th member of the band. Non-stop fun and giggles.” recalls Amber. Inspiration came from 70s sci-fi show ‘UFO’, ‘The Flower Fairy’ poems of Cicley Mary Barker, Wands’ 2019 KEXP session, and Fred’s Home Bakery (York). It all collides to make for the horizontal headphone listening experience of the year. And the name? “We’re all skint, overworked, bored and just want nice things now, all the time.” While the auditory pallet broadens, the manifesto remains the same “We’re willing to explore everything sonically possible within our music in order to express ourselves as people. Taking musical ideas and twisting to fit within the cruush framework. We’re not interested in what people might expect to hear from us.”

This time out cruush considered how the physical space around them could be mapped into sound, conjuring everything from internal claustrophobia to giddy psychedelics: “We thought more about the rooms we recorded in. Drums, for example, we used a very small and detailed space with a lot of mics for ‘Headspace’ and in contrast a huge room with minimal mics for ‘As She Grows’ to add to the mania of the song.” This fed into an overall sense that if the architecture of tracks is subject to experimentation of materials and techniques, why not ball this freedom into the use of new instrumental forms: “We’ve never really thought about using a piano before but it just fit really fit into place on these sessions, particularly the little melodic lift in the last chorus of ‘Ladybird Song’. The Roland RE-201 pops up in a lot of places if you listen carefully, we hid lots of delicious analogue delay feedback throughout most of the songs.” shares Arthur. “Our secret weapon however was an omnichord that Amber bought from someone in Sweden, patched through a big old Roland RE-201.”

Starting life as a logic demo, first single ‘As She Grows’ sounds like tripping on mushrooms in the middle of a fairground. The rhythms of the different rides warping your brain in myriad directions. Skippy, hyperactive and puckish the lyrics about fairies and evoke the natural world and the nostalgic cocoon of childhood: “When I was a kid, I was the one that was obsessed with fairies, would wear my wings everywhere until my parents had to take them off me.” remarks Amber. ‘The Flower Fairy’ poems by Cicley Mary Barker serving as the inspiration. In 5/4 with one bar of 4/4, the time signature bewilders and bewitches, like a chant or spell.

Commencing with the spit and hiss of an 80s drum machine ‘Headspace’ blooms with sidewinding guitars and the kind of synth swell that wouldn’t be out of place in the title sequence of a Nordic crime drama. The track is positively tidal in its ebb and flow, reaching out for the shoreline of a chorus and receding back into the press of a textural, gothic surf. When the final chorus hits, it’s like shoving your head inside and avalanche, suffocating and overwhelming. “Perhaps the most relatable song on the EP. Everyone has a crush they’ve tried to get over.” states Amber.

‘Cotton Wool’ is a dense, low-tempo monster lathered in modulated synth and delays. Arthur remembers: “the entire song tumbled out of an open tuning I was playing on a 12-string. We instantly had the same sonic vision.” Adds Amber: “Lyrically, it touches on monotony and the never ending sparkleless dirge of your mid 20s.” Elsewhere on the EP ‘Water Breathers’ takes its cues from science fiction: “We were watching a 1970s show called UFO in a spooky old airbnb in York, full of taxidermy and pictures of the queen. Water breathers were the bad guys in one of the episodes. The show was hilariously dated and deliciously camp, with constant cut scenes to people doing the twist in a space club.” Finally, ‘Ladybird Song’ bring a moment of fuzz-folk inspired by Amber’s gardening efforts during the summer months. “I planted pansies that all got eaten by aphids. I googled a remedy and discovered that you could buy 25 adult ladybirds on Etsy to release into your garden to eat the aphids so I wrote about the experience.”

cruush are once again set to bring their thoughtform nightscapes rock to the masses. Clad in the muted tones of charity shop bargains “Whatever's comfortable luv x” they live out the hospitality misery of working the city’s bars and cafes by day, while their nocturnal selves sell out shows. Having toured with and supported BDRMM, NewDad, The Lounge Society, Far Caspian, Ian Sweet, Flyying Colours and Pastel, the band are setting out on a headline European tour and playing festivals such as Left of the Dial and Beyond the Music.

Our Worlds Collide

Brum based Shoegaze/Post-Rock.