#4. A very Famous mano-a-mano
The genre-skipping untitled (recs) trio Famous take the London System to the cleaners.
Dear friend,
This is Zugzwang #4, and this time we’re really cooking on the gas. The handbrake is off. This week I’ve got a cracker of a guest this week, maybe the best player to date, making some of the best moves I’ve succumbed to this entire series. I’d like to think that the title to this week’s newsletter is the first use of the term ‘mano-a-mano’ in living memory, and let’s hope it’s the last ever use of it, certainly in the English language.
Indeed! A ludicrous display from the Zugzwang newsletter, but a worthy adversary. Can just picture the Office conversations tomorrow; “did you see the ‘Wang last night?” “Yeah, ludicrous display, tanked him.” More on that later.
I’ll also later introduce you to a bunch of my favourite Japanese bands, who I discovered for the most part in an article I wrote for Hook Journal this time last year. More on that later, too.
This week, I’ve had the new track by Sons of Kemet, ‘Hustle’, on repeat. Their ‘Your Queen is a Reptile’ album is my favourite of the last five years, and it sounds like they’ve picked up where they left off with Kojey Radical in tow. There are so many things happening in London that musically excite me, and the scene surrounding Shabaka Hutchings and friends is something that makes me incredibly grateful to be able to bear witness to. I wonder if Herr Hutchings plays chess. That’s something to research in time for next week, if there is indeed a way to research this.
I’ve also been loving the new Dry Cleaning record ‘New Long Leg’. Florence Shaw’s storytelling is really something, and the band sound excellent. I’m also told reliably that a couple of them play chess, so they’re extremely on my radar at this moment in time.
I’ve also been learning German and I am enjoying it. I could now comfortably ask a Bavarian man “was ist ein Zugzwang?”, and then not understand the answer. Jetzt! Es ist Showzeit!
Chess Clash #4: Famous
image credit: Maxwell Granger
Now then. I first became aware of the ungoogleable pop outfit Famous in Winter 2018, when I encountered them at the Windmill in support of “Black Fendrix, Jersk Midi”. That night, with occasional vocals from Fendrix, and a stirring rendition of collaborative single ‘Ice Cream’, Black Midi played a set of barnstorming prog-smothered Celtic footstompers, Greep on accordion. Exquisite. (At least, that’s how I remember it. There were rows of people far taller than me in front.)
It’s a wonder then, having seen one of my favourite (dare I say ‘favourite ever’) bands do a festive improv set, that it was the support band that stood out. Famous lined up as a six-piece, delicately balanced on the stage, amongst their members were Jerskin Fendrix on keys, deathcrash’s Tiernan Banks on the guitar, and a wide-eyed Jack Merrett as frontman. They were spectacular, bright synth tones and occasional cosmic riffs atop really tight quirky pop songs; a really great band.
Their debut mini-album ‘England’ came out in May 2019, and it’s fantastic. Tracks like ‘Forever’ and ‘England 2’ zip off the record, off-kilter flashes of pop excellence that leak charisma. Somewhere between The Cars and the Residents, Frank Sinatra and PSB, genre-skipping pop for the ages. I’ve been obsessed with it since it came out – for me, it has some of the best songs on it I’ve heard in years, and it’s the most fun a boy can have without a chessboard in sight. They share a label, untitled, with deathcrash, whose guitarist gave me a good pasting in Zz #1, alongside Horsey and Jerskin Fendrix.
The band are now a three piece; frontman Jack Merrett remains at the centre of the project, with the propulsive rhythm section of Danny Sanders and George Gardner pushing them onwards. Six has become three, but nothing has been lost. They play with a bit of a backing track, “very elaborate karaoke”, Sanders the drummer told Wax in January.
They’re readying the release of a follow-up EP ‘The Valley’, which was preceded last month by the single ‘Stars’ – an uncannily stadium-ready number that tees up the May release of 2021’s best EP.
It’s bassist George that I sit down with today, for my now-customary chessboard duel. He’s a helluva chess player, and I’m quite quickly in trouble against him.
I have the white pieces, and play an accelerated version of the London System, a bit of a go-to against players that will presumably crush my natural Italian Game. I think after this game I’ve never had any inclination to play D4 first move ever again. What follows is a bit of a destruction.
On the fifth move, George forks my knight and bishop with a pawn, and it’s all downhill from there. On the fifteenth move, he offers me a free pawn, leading to an amazing quartet of punchy moves that lines up a killer discover attack with his knight and queen on meine dame. With my queen gone, I’m woefully underpowered, and he finishes me off with a neat combo of queen checks. 28 moves, and mate.
After the game, the chess.com analysis puts me as having made a single mistake, and a small one at that. George recorded an unbeatable 99.6% accuracy to my 83%. I am slain! Throughout our conversation, it becomes clear that he came prepared. “I’ve been playing since I was 10,” he tells me down the phone. “But I started taking it more seriously, playing on Lichess, when my mum got remarried, to her now-husband.”
“He is a really good chess player,” George continues. “Like seriously great. He makes it really fun. I hadn’t been playing for ages, but I decided I wanted to study it. Get to know the books and stuff. I got obsessed for a while, I was genuinely addicted to online chess.”
“You did a D4 opening,” he tells me, just a few minutes after the dust has settled on an embarrassing defeat for team Zugzwang. “I’m best equipped to play as for black. My stepdad plays queen's pawn openings. When I wanted to beat him I was studying all the black queen pawn openings.” It was at this point I decided that I would almost always stick to E4 openings.
I think George is probably my chess-iest guest yet for this series. Definitely the type to have a favourite opening, so that’s what I ask first. “When I’m white, the one I’ve studied the most and feel most confident with is the Scotch Game,” he says. “It’s a classic E4 opening. E4, E5, Knight to F3, black’s Knight to defend on C6. Then this is what makes it a Scotch Game; white does a really aggressive, and nice - I like it - move, pawn to D4, offering up a trade off. The trade off develops white’s position quite well. Suddenly after the trade offs, I’ve got a pawn and a queen in the centre, and my attacks are ready, I love it.”
“For black, what I do is the Petrov Defence,” he continues. “It’s one I really like. It’s for an E4 opening. E4 met by E5. White attacks my pawn with their knight, and instead of defending I bring out my knight to attack, so you’ve got that kind of symmetry. I guess it’s a bit of a gambit in a way.” I play this from time to time, but definitely wouldn’t call it a favourite. Simply much living on the edge.
After all, though, this is a newsletter about chess and music, and we have a lot to discuss on the sonic side o’ things too. Famous are readying the release of their second record ‘The Valley’ and they’ve been very busy over the last year or so. 2019’s ‘I Want To Crawl Inside of You’ (not on the EP) was followed by krautrock-inspired single ‘Nice While it Lasted’ (on the EP) last year.
They also performed a rooftop concert in January, for a short film by ex-member-turned-collaborator James Ogram. It’s on YouTube here, and is one of the band’s two big homages to The Beatles; the other being a track called ‘The Beatles’ which emotively closes that set, and their forthcoming EP. I want to discuss this, and more, now the dust on my unsuccessful chess duel has settled.
“Why is that track called ‘The Beatles’?” George repeats my question back to me. “Did you see the rooftop concert? There you go.”
“I don’t think it’s quite that straightforward,” he quickly continues. “Obviously the Beatles are very special to me and Jack, right from when we were getting into music. There’s something very romantic about giving them this homage, and something very good about the fact the first time we were doing the track ‘The Beatles’ we were ripping off what The Beatles did. Lyrically, it’s not about the Beatles, but in terms of sentiment and spirit around it that relates.” It’s a gorgeous track, as you can hear from the rooftop concert; looping pianos, lyrics with a meta sense of humour but a perfect sense of the moment; all of the good stuff.
At the core of Famous is the relationship between the members. Watching the rooftop concert, or them live, is a strangely comforting experience. It’s like watching a friendship played out in the most theatrical of ways. Merrett’s persona as a performer is bombastic and extroverted, and something that comes across in the music very well, so it’s quite nice to get George’s take on the Famous origin story. “Jack and I have been close friends since we were young,” George says. “We went to school together, and since we met aged 12 or 13, we’ve been in one band or another together.”
“I met Danny, who’s the drummer; we were studying jazz together at Leeds College of Music,” he carries on. “At the time, me and Jack were conceptualising a massive band.” Massive how? “Massive, like an infinite amount of people; as many as we could possibly get. Which is ironic because we’re now a three piece.”
Although Famous are now a power trio, it’s pretty interesting to me as a fully paid up fan of deathcrash (see Zugzwang #1, the inaugural ‘wang) and Jerskin Fendrix, to find out how the original six-piece lineup came about. “One of our really good school friends is an artist called Bart Price. He does the graphics for Black Country,” says George. “He went to Cambridge and met two people. Joscelin, also known as Jerskin Fendrix, and Tiernan, who is the lead singer of deathcrash. They put on a play together called Ubu Roi, and Joscelin and Tiernan did the music.
“We ended up going and loving it and chatting,” he continues: “and a couple of months down the line we’d asked Joscelin and Tiernan to be full time members of the band. Then James Ogram was the final piece of the jigsaw; we’re still good friends with him, and he did the rooftop concert.”
Naively, they settled on a name that has become notoriously ungoogleable. It was a struggle to find the very good interviews that helped inform this piece “I typed in all sorts of things like ‘famous band london’ to google,” I tell George. “And all that came up was articles like ‘the Ten Most Famous Bands from London”.
“We weren’t on that, I presume?” He laughs: “It’s nothing but a nightmare. We’ve given Alex (Putman, untitled (recs) label honcho) a challenge of thinking of ways to get us googleable. If you type in ‘Famous Rooftop Concert’ it does come up.”
Around a year ago, Famous became a three piece. “We’re still very dear friends and we see each other all the time,” George tells me. “But it felt like the natural thing to do; Joscelin doing Jerskin, Tiernan doing deathcrash, and us doing Famous, with none of us pulling against each other like we might have been before. Now we’re a very happy three piece. It’s definitely a very interesting transition, going from a six piece to a three piece. Very different. There were teething pains, but I feel like we’re really in our stride now.” With ‘The Valley’, Famous look to cement themselves as one of the capital’s finest rising exports, and it does sound like they’re only on an upwards trajectory. With each release they sound even more assured, and each song a statement as grandiose as the name of the beast.
A lot of the band’s aesthetic is informed by the London skyline; their cover artworks all have a very distinctive feel to them, and they’re almost-vertigo inducing with their high-def views of tall buildings. It’s certainly novel. “Yeah,” George says. “Ultra high definition, subtly distorted shots of the London skyline. The Shard specifically. I’m actually staring at it right now.”
In the rooftop concert, Merrett is constantly gazing up at the Shard, which is in clear view. Serenading it almost. In previous interviews, Famous have been saying that the ultimate endgame would be to play a show on top of the Shard, which certainly feels like the natural conclusion.
The natural conclusion to this interview is the question, ‘knight or bishop’, although the cards are on the table and it slipped my mind against Clams in #3. “The grandmasters consider a bishop to be slightly better because it can cover more squares at once,” he tells me. “But I think that I’m most effective with a knight. Like in today’s game, with your queen. Bang. That’s why I like it.” Bang.
Zz Playlist #2
Following from the Outsider Synthesists playlist in #1, I return with more delights. This playlist is loosely themed around the concept of ‘All of My Favourite Japanese Music that is On Spotify, 69-84’ .
My favourite band of the 70s are Les Rallizes Denudes. I never grow tired of them, and I never grow tired of writing about them or telling people about them. It’s phantom GOAT music, fuzzy proto-noise mulch. Mizutani knows what’s what.
About a year ago, for the very excellent Hook Journal, I wrote a piece on 70s Japanese music, called ‘The Bands of the Rising Sun’, and to this day it’s one of my favourite things I’ve ever written. You can read that here, and perhaps treat the below playlist as a companion piece for it.
Les Raz feature prominently, alongside maverick maestros like MARIAH, who I know nothing about, and J.A Caesar, who I know lots about but weirdly don’t get round to talking about in the Hook Piece.
The best Rallizes album has been removed from Spotify, but you can listen to that here. In fact, there’s a colossal lack of Japanese music available to stream, City Pop basically doesn’t exist on streaming services, but what is there is beautiful and urgent and important, and if you like it I’d suggest a very deep dive beyond the ‘fy. There’s always more to hear and more to learn but hopefully this will start you off on your way. Enjoy.
And that’s all we have time for this week, folks! Once more, I must say share if you like, and subscribe if you enjoy. I’ve got a metric tonne more on the way, and I appreciate having you here for the Zugzwang voyage. Take it easy, and keep on listening to this song.
See you next time.
As ever,
Cal