Far Out Meets: Warmduscher as they bring the Hot Spot to Electric Brixton
Clams Baker Jr of Warmduscher dreams of a utopian world where Bill Clinton really did have sexual relations with that woman. He seeks out a better biosphere. One that whirls like a burlesque of sleazy originality. A world where Iggy Pop was canonised by the Catholic church as a saint, and James Dean made it out of the wreckage, dusted himself down, amended his quiff, and reassumed his causeless rebellion. Despite all the odds, Clams and his cronies are determined to pursue this uncertain future and drag all of us sorry sinners to the Hot Stop of a bright new day.
“We worked really hard to get to where we are,” Clams informs me. “We could have easily given up tonnes of times, but we didn’t.” Amid a modern music industry beset by algorithms, safe sales and the resultant penchant to coerce towards conformity of the prevalent status quo, these greased-up pariahs took Lindsey Buckingham’s sage advice, went their own way, and they’ve been poking at the mainstream from the outside ever since.
This steadfast determination to stick with their own wandering muse has not been an easy battle. “I remember someone saying, ‘I really love this album because it sounds like a mixtape,’ meaning that there’s ten songs with ten different genres,” Clams recalls. “That’s because we do what we like and at the end of the day, you have to be happy with what you do. We come from all different backgrounds of music so it’s nice to be able to blend it together. Some people get the impression that we don’t take ourselves seriously but it’s actually the opposite. Everyone in the band is super fucking talented. We could literally play anything. But we choose to play what we like.”
“It’s hard. It might even be a little bit selfish, but what we aren’t is contrived. Some people might think we are, but we aren’t, maybe even to a fault,” Clams continues. That’s what we all want. Music is at its best in that mould—the brilliance of Warmduscher proves that. But does it run smoothly with the strict promotion of today? “Maybe it’s hurt us? I’d say it definitely has because you can’t pigeonhole us or put us in a box.”
However, if you remain outside the clobbered coterie of the ‘same old’ A&R safety net as brilliantly as Warmduscher have, then folks will take note. “Thanks to people like The Leaf Label, Trashmouth, now Simon at Bella Union, and people like Marc Riley for sticking their neck out for people like us. We get a bad rap sometimes as this dysfunctional party band who are unmanageable. That’s not what we do. We just want to play music, we want to be able to make a living, and we want to make people feel good. And that’s what we fucking do.”
It’s this bloody-mindedness to be blooming boldly original that has also inspired a slew of other bands to join them as merry outsiders of the mainstream (and Clams rattled off a collection of his favourite that I’ll be collating in a playlist in a follow-up piece). But it isn’t just bands that they are inspiring to take dominion over their own lives—with the current song of the year, ‘Wild Flowers’, they gave all of us license to cut a bigger slice of slack.
‘How many people do you think quit their job to the track?’ I ask the friendly frontman. “I hope tonnes of them! I’m not endorsing quitting jobs, only jobs that you don’t want to have, you know what I mean. We’ve all been through it. If that inspired anyone who’s in a bad situation, whether that be a job, a relationship, or whatever, to change and follow whatever it is that they want to do then job done,” he says. ‘I love my job’, I tell him, ‘but I still told my boss to fuck off’. He got a kick out of that and chuckled, “Good for you.” They are, after all, a fun-loving band.
That certainly comes across at their blazing live shows. “It’s really been live where it all makes sense. That’s where we’ve been hustling and grafting. We’ve just been playing together and getting to know people through the scenes and being comfortable. It is just like one big dysfunctional family.” And like a family, they look out for their friends, each other, and the household that they’re part of.
A great example of this collectivism is the fact that the forthcoming Electric Lates show is a feast that runs from 9pm to 6am and also features Opus Kink, POZI, Josh Caffe, and DJ sets from Simone Marie (Primal Scream), Jeanie Crystal, Faboo, Sports Banger and more for only £20. It’s absolutely perfect for these besieged times. As Clams opines, there’s plenty of artistic life in the rubble of society. “I think when things are shit,” he explains, “you find people making music because that’s just what they do. That’s what rises out of it. When there’s no reason to make music, that’s when you’re going to find the best stuff. You start finding people who are just doing it because they love it and that creates genuine scenes.”
The last time Clams got to soak in all this creative shit was back when the recession hit. He was in a post-9/11 Brooklyn. He went down to a party called Broken Sunshine and there was “this amazing art scene. The artistic creation that came out of the feeling of everything being shit and wrong came together with all these amazing graffiti artists and Suicide actually played, it was the best. Everything is shit – if you want to focus on that – but I’m a glass half full mother fucker if you know what I mean,” Clams says with his joyous cackle. “When you find the real hustlers scraping to get by, you’ll see it happening and you’ll know it’s real.”
You will, in essence, discover the Hot Spot, and it is this sort of party that Electric Lates hopes to recreate. “It’s going to be a celebration. We’re transforming the place into a Hot Spot. We’re trying to create that vision. It’ll be a safe place for everyone to do what they want as long as it’s fun, doesn’t hurt anyone, and it’s not crooked. Things are tough now, but you’ve got to still put your chin up and enjoy yourself. So that night is going to be like all the work we put into this album for one party that goes as long as it will go. It’s going to be a throwback to things I used to read about in New York City that I wanted to go to as a kid.”
He adds: “That’s the other thing, everyone that’s playing is amazing. There’s just everything. It’s like a mini-festival in one day… or one day-to-night, whatever you want to call it. It’s just giving back to everyone who supported us and treating them to a great night.” It sounds like a utopia if I ever heard one. This piece started by saying that Warmduscher seek out a better biosphere, well, like the bizarrely cast Woody Allen in Antz, they seem to have found it in the heart of Brixton.
This good-time jam will be thrown down on November 11th at Electric Brixton. You can snap up bargain tickets to one of the events of the year right here. As Glastonbury continues its transition to Middle-Classtonbury with £355 tickets, it’s wholesome fun for all the family like this Hot Spot trip where you’ll find the real shit in this old rubble. God bless you sleazy bastards, thanks for bringing the Hot Spot to us like a glitterball spray of Saharan sun.
