The Act: SCROUNGE

The Release: 'HIT'

The Format: DIGITAL SINGLE

The Release Date: AUGUST 19TH 2022

The Digital Link: orcd.co/scrounge_hit

The Truth: South London heat is intense. It doesn’t tend to stick around long, but the atmosphere finds a way of lingering. It’s an intensity you can hear in the music of two-piece noise-punk project Scrounge, quite literally in the case of ‘This Summer’s Been Lethal' and ‘HIT’, the first singles from their debut mini-album, Sugar, Daddy, due for release on September 9th with a launch party at Dream Bags Jaguar Shoes on September 7th. Recorded at a friend’s near-airless studio on the hottest day of 2021, both tracks consist of a dense slalom of machine-gun percussion, disintegrating drum machines and corkscrewing guitar, topped off by singer and guitarist Lucy Alexander’s snarled vocal. Taut, frustrated, but not without melody or tenderness, it sets the tone for much of 'Sugar, Daddy'.

"'HIT' is sort of our misguided attempt at a conventional pop song," explains drummer Luke Cartledge. "I mean, it's got a chorus and a four-to-the-floor beat, so that's a start – but filtered through the lens of the punk, dance and industrial music we love so much. A radio-unfriendly unit shifter."

"'HIT' hurts," says Lucy. "This song takes the dingy dregs of a lockdown and dresses it up as an anthem about aging. We might've been holed up but 'HIT' hurtles towards the unknown."

Since meeting at Goldsmiths University in the middle of the last decade, Lucy and Luke have been trying to express how it feels to be a young person living and working in a fast-changing metropolis, balancing the constant pressure cooker of making rent and staying healthy with a desire to make art and properly engage with the communities that actually make London what it is. They spent the first couple of years of their collaboration gigging hard across the capital and occasionally outside it, taking Megabuses and tubes to shows; eventually, they boiled down their ideas into a brand of sharp, concise art-punk that introduced elements of folk, techno and industrial music into a more familiar cocktail of noise-rock and riot grrl influences. This work culminated in their debut singles, ‘Etch’ and ‘Crimson’, and their debut EP, Ideal, released via Fierce Panda.

Now, they’re set to release their debut mini-album, Sugar, Daddy, a living, breathing document of all that experience as a band so far. The title and artwork comes from a realisation Lucy and Luke had that as a DIY band, with full-time jobs, radical politics, and a lack of access to the kinds of resources that are often just beneath the surface of apparently organic creative projects, they couldn’t be relying on any mysterious benefactor to make this thing work. It’s sometimes easy to forget that ‘DIY’ has a material meaning. In a society stratified by class, frothing with bigotry, and radiating with naked hostility at the idea of ordinary people expressing their creative and intellectual ambitions, sometimes you have to be your own sugar daddy.

Go feel the sweet beat at this special launch show here:
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 7TH 2022
LONDON SHOREDITCH DREAM BAGS JAGUAR SHOES
SCROUNGE (+ Leather.head + Noah & The Loners)
/dice.fm/event/oreqa-scrounge-leather-head-noah-and-the-loners-7th-sep-dream-bags-jaguar-shoes-london-tickets

www.facebook.com/helloscrounge