#2. Playing Chess w/ Regressive Left
"The hottest new thing this side of the Atlantic" sit down for a couple of games
Dear friend,
I hope this finds you well. The world is a deeply disturbing place and I would like a new one. It has been a source of great comfort to turn my attention to the chess board, and really focus, like really focus, on something other than the world outside. 64 squares and no vitamin D, that’s me.
For too long I’ve been wondering what the answers to the big questions are. Is it really worth it? Will it ever get better? Can someone put me in contact with the RZA? The GZA? Masta Killa? Can even the great epochal genius of Pharaoh Sanders make a Floating Points record worth listening to? The answer is always no.
I’m still working on how I’m supposed to open these. E4 is my go to way of opening most things, but you can’t open a newsletter with the king’s pawn. What have I been up to? On Sunday I went mudlarking between Greenwich and Charlton. I found lots of animal bones and little else, and then a dog pissed on my bag. On Monday I made General Tso’s Tofu and caught up on The Circle. And on Tuesday I listened to ‘John L’ by Black Midi over and over and over. On Wednesday, today, I read the story of ODB’s verse on Mariah Carey’s ‘Fantasy’ several times aloud to all of my housemates.
It has been an unremarkable week. That’s why I’m excited to send you all this week’s issue of Zugzwang, on a Wednesday evening.
This week, I talk to one of my favourite emerging artists. Regressive Left caught my attention in the Zoom-quiz era of Lockdown, and have stayed with me since. You can listen to ‘Take the Hit’ here, and follow the band on Twitter here, in preparation for this interview. I’ve also been listening to a lot of new and exciting things, and telling no one about them, so I can’t wait to share them with you.
Chess Clash #2: Regressive Left
photo: Luis Kramer
Regressive Left are a fairly new trio that make propulsive freakout music for twitchy Guerilla Toss stans. Simon Tyrie, Georgia Hardy and Will Crosby have been playing in bands together for a number of years, but with their most recent incarnation they reach closer and closer to brilliance. Much in the same vein as Squid or KEG, they weld weirdo NY funk-disco influences with nouveau guitar wigouts; for want of a better analogy, they are the hottest new thing this side of the Atlantic.
Their 2020 debut single is testament to this; Hardy is Jaki Leibezeit incarnate behind the kit, giving the Crosby’s guitar squalls and Tyrie’s incessant sampler weirdness a platform to go off in kinds of weird directions. Meanwhile, Tyrie’s lyrics are compelling narrative tapestries delivered with a volatile flair, here taking aim at the “I’m alright Jacks'' of this world. Meanwhile, ‘Take the Hit’ is their latest single, out last week, it is an explosive dance-punk concoction that sounds like 80s and 00s New York condensed into something thoroughly urgent and modern.
Simon Tyrie is also an occasional chess player; and a chessboard makes its way onto the brutalist collage of ‘Take the Hit’. With Winter’s last gales blowing a hooley outside, we sit down for a couple of games, and a chat about what way the Regressive Left are heading.
He opens the first game as white, and I defend his E4 opening with the Sicilian. He continues his development a la the Italian game, chasing my knight all the way round the board before winning it. We trade off pieces early, including a 14th move queen trade, and I’m left with two static rooks and an undeveloped bishop, while Simon has a bishop, a knight and a rook, all on good squares. A pretty gruelling game, we attack and attack each other for the best part of 50 moves, before in the end I finish off the job with superior pawn structure allows me two queens at the death.
“Yeah,” Tyrie tells me immediately after. “I probably made some stupid moves but it was fun.”
“I have really horrible vivid memories of joining a chess club when I was 7 or 8,” he carries on. “The first game I played, this really smart kid did the four move checkmate (Scholar’s Mate) on me. Because of that, I remember exactly how to play it, and I instinctively always move the bishop first.” Scholar’s Mate is deadly to beginner’s, and until recently early queen attacks would really disrupt any momentum I built up.
I can remember discovering this four move checkmate when I’d sit down and play on my own, and feeling like I’d completed the game; I still break it out when I play people that don’t know what they’re doing.
“I barely ever play chess,” he admits: “It’s weird, I think you have the knowledge ingrained. The family PC had chess, so it’s stuck with me from that. My parents would never play chess with me, my dad was too worried he’d lose.”
Onto the task at hand. Regressive Left have been one of my favourite new artists since ‘Eternal Returns’ dropped in the first lockdown period. I want to find out more about this band before they reach the seismic heights they’re destined for. “We’re starting to think of ourselves as a lockdown band,” Tyrie tells me. “But despite that, we’ve been playing together for a long time. Us three were in a band before, Lupo, and we’ve been playing in groups parallel to each other on the same bills since we were teenagers.”
“I’m from Luton, and Georgia’s from Luton,” he tells me of the origin. “And Will’s from a town just outside of Bedford, so we were on the Bedfordshire scene. Will was well known in the area as a sick guitarist.” I hastily google Lupo, unaware of this fact, and find out that in 2013 It’s All Indie called them ‘a dynamic four piece from Luton creating dark indie alternative music’: “I think back to it as a dark phase of my musical output; some of it was really good, but some of it was really truly awful.”
Regressive Left are clearly a whole new prospect. “I sing, and I also control via something called the digitakt,” Tyrie adds. What is a digitakt? “It’s like a groove box, with samples and loops, it makes up the electronic side of things. Meanwhile Georgia drums and does backing vocals, and Will plays guitars. People are surprised when they hear our songs that we’re a three piece.” It’s true, the band sound humongous, colossal firework displays on record, digital textures and instrumental bombast really explode in a way that you wouldn’t associate with three musicians.
“I’ve always wanted there to be a British DFA equivalent,” Tyrie says. “LCD are an example of a band that took a lot of British influences, and turned it into a totally New York thing. I think that it could work the other way round.” Reg Left come good on that statement on ‘Take the Hit’, propulsive drum beats entwine with guitars that recall everything from The Rapture to the Contortions.
At the centre of it all, Tyrie’s delivery and vocals are the final bold Kandinsky brush strokes that bound the whole canvas together. “A lot of bands right now are very narrative based and spoken word,” he tells me. “I’m terrible at that. I’m too used to melodies. But I really wanted to challenge myself to strip away the melodies and stop singing.
“The only way I knew how to do that was by imagining: ‘what kind of melody would David Byrne write?’” he continues. “It’s all to do with style of vocal; I hear a lot of Mark E Smith-style singers and I don’t have a problem with that. It’s just a style of vocal. There’s certain singers people feel like you can’t imitate or borrow too much from.”
With regards to influences, the band draw from all over. Tyrie’s lyrics are informed by the political climate, with ‘Take the Hit’ a eulogy for the financial crisis, whilst the musical influences are plucked from all over the shop. I’ve mentioned already how the sound of No New York informs them, but there are many other touchpoints; some of them less obvious than others. I hear a lotta Stereolab, Arto Lindsay, y’know, the good stuff.
But me and Regressive Left share a love of London’s burgeoning jazz scene. For me, it’s been a helluva joy and privilege to cover Comet Is Coming and Nubya Garcia, Emma-Jean Thackray and Theon Cross over the last few years, and this is shared by the band. “We were talking about this the other day,” Tyrie says. “The one thing we’ve really shared in common was the explosion in the London jazz scene, which we’ve all followed really closely. We were blown away by the freedom of that scene. and how they’ve absorbed different influences and really modernised jazz. Moses Boyd incorporating grime is a great example of that.
“They always talk about the influence of these great jazz musicians like Charlie Parker,” he continues. “But it’s just so modern.” He namechecks Nubya Garcia’s sax tones, and Wilma Archer’s staggering ‘Western Circular’ album from last year. Perhaps not so much musically, but alongside several post-punk contemporaries, you can also draw the line between Reg Left and jazz-playin’ outliers like Lunch Money Life and Soccer96. There’s definitely something to that. “I’m loving Famous as well…” he signs off; I love Famous too, but for more nuanced thoughts on that topic you’ll have to come back next week.
As always, I ask him “knight or bishop?”
“Bishop. You can be a lot more sneaky with it.” Quite.
We have one more game, but it’s a bit of a whitewash. I have the white pieces, and Simon blunders his queen, not noticing a nasty rook pin. A worthy adversary, but it would be fair to say that I’m the best at chess, whilst Tyrie is better at fronting a brutalist dance-rock band. And hopefully, that’s the way it will stay.
On repeat.
This week, I’ve been listening to a lot, and I’d love to share it with you. Lockdown leaves us all struggling to engage with the world around us, or at least, that’s my experience of it, but finding a new favourite record is the best kinda escapism. I’ve loved music all my life, written about it online for best part of a decade, and I still get that just-scored-a-goal feeling when I find something new that I love.
The liberating joy and the catharsis of Fela Kuti’s 70s records have been all encompassing. I love afro beat. Tony Allen’s trademark polyrhythms behind the drums constantly drum to crescendos before Africa 70 burst into giddy brass flourishes. My favourite album of his is ‘Roforofo Fight’, its dizzying title track a call to arms to his fellow Nigerians to recognise the senseless violence of colonialism. Meanwhile ‘Go Slow’ is pretty much the best song ever recorded; do yourself a favour and check it out.
I don’t know as much about Fela Kuti as I should, perhaps his discography is something to properly trawl in the coming weeks, but the man brings some serious dinner. Perhaps that’s why I was surprised, then, that when walking through Greenwich I found a black plaque honouring him – Kuti studied music at Trinity Laban’s music faculty on the Thames in the 50s; the more you know.
I’ve also been revisiting Spellling’s ‘Mazy Fly’, ahead of her second Sacred Bones album, which is out sometime in May. There’s a really varied and fun amount of synthesiser textures, and it’s really addictive music. There’s good synths aplenty too, on the latest Soul Jazz compilation ‘Two Synths A Guitar (And) A Drum Machine’ which is a bunch of new bands that modernise influences from 80s new/no wave stuff with aplomb. Artists like Zongamin and Tom of England just get it so right.
Meanwhile, the new single by Black Midi might be the best recording they’ve ever made. ‘John L’ is a beefy take on King Crim, some kinda primordial splurge that’s too Primus for Primus, and it has this real pummelling relentlessness to it. Guitarist Matt is taking a break from the band to focus on his mental health, and in his place are some badly mistreated pianos and violins. Scronk-maximalism.
It sounds like an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon directed by Gareth Evans (he of the Raid 2 fame). It just goes BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Skibedeedoo BLAM! The video’s amazing too. Have they jumped the shark? Probably. Almost certainly. But jumping sharks is cool and fun and more artists on big labels should do it, no one needs a “more mature second album”.
I also like the new tracks by Charlotte Adigéry and by Squid and enjoyed this performance by Mdou Moctar.
Standing on Chess Corner
As I said earlier, I’m still sussing out the format of this thing. But this is something that’ll stick. I will end every letter with a new idea or concept I’ve learned about the beautiful game and would like to share with you all.
With this video as my guide, I’ve plunged deep into the unheimlich world of the Evans Gambit. Its purpose is pretty simply; to spice up the Italian Game, which is one of the most common openings at the lower levels (my level). Very good little trick IMO.
Anyhow, that’s it for another edition of Zugzwang. I hope you enjoyed it; it was fun to do. If you like it, please share it with your friends, the more the merrier.
As ever,
Cal