More about: Youth Sector

Roll up, roll up, it’s another instalment of our new, new band column Hello Tomorrow. Today we’re turning our attention to Brighton-based quintet Youth Sector. Brimming with buzzy synths and bristling riffs, the band are gearing up to release their debut EP, but not without sharing the video for track ‘Real Estate’ with us first. 

Lead vocalist and guitarist Nick Tompkins explains, “I already had the lyric ‘compromises, compromises, look at all the housing prices, watch as all the water rises’ jotted down and wanted to incorporate it into something. So when I was messing around with this 8-bit synth riff (the intro), I really wanted to smash the lyric into that idea somehow, so the rest of the song came from that starting point. Lyrically it documents all the general crapness that comes with trying to rent a house as a young person, feeling priced out and uninspired as well as having to deal with the oftentimes abysmal quality of the houses that are barely affordable in the first place.”

Catch the video for ‘Real Estate’ first on Gigwise below:

On the video he elaborates, “We were trying to think of video content that could be made during lockdown, and pretty much the only thing we had at our disposal was a green screen we'd used for a previous project, but we didn't want to do anything that seemed lazy and throwaway just because we didn't have many resources. When you've got nothing but time on your hands it is quite freeing to know that you can be as ambitious as you want with the content you want to make. The idea for the video came pretty quickly and more or less fully formed and I had a strong idea of what it looked like in my head, although no ideas on how to get there, having no skills in video editing or building dolls houses.”

Joined by Bradley Moore (guitar), Josh Doyle (bass), Harvey Dent (synth) and Dan Smith (drums), they have already released twisting track ‘No Fanfare’, which, alongside ‘Real Estate’, makes up half of their debut EP Mundanity. “'No Fanfare' and 'Real Estate' are two favourites from our live set, while 'Happening' and 'Hands' were written and recorded specifically for this EP with little to no live exposure, which was a first for us at the time. We wanted to make sure the EP felt dynamic and that it wasn't sonically flat throughout. Writing songs specifically for the EP meant we were able to create two songs which reach out further sonically than our other songs have so far,” Josh details about how they finalised the tracklist for this body of work. 

There’s a pulsating ‘Youth Sector’ sound that threads each track the five-piece release together, and it’s interesting to learn how the outfit approach genre parameters when making music. Do they find genre a redundant thing in 2020, when songs weave so many inspirations into the fold? "[I'm] not sure that genre is redundant as such as it's still an important and convenient way of describing music to each other, however it seems that genre is definitely needing to become more specific with the amount of music around today; there's nothing less inspiring than for someone to just describe a band as 'indie' - on its own that just doesn't mean anything anymore,” Nick begins.

“There's definitely no agenda in terms of what style we must stick to. It would feel boring to just write within the same parameters each time so naturally we try to keep it fresh when writing new songs.” And on their inspirations outside of music, Nick relays, “World events and popular culture are a driving force that inspires our songs. Not usually the kind of positive inspiration that makes you skip to a guitar and gleefully sing your heart out; more just feelings and ideas that are carried around and persist until they're put onto paper. Our other creative outlets like our music videos are loosely inspired by some of our favourite comedy series' like Alan Partridge, Brass Eye and other fragments and references we throw back and forth.”

Having spent the majority of lockdown working on new music, Youth Sector don’t appear to be taking their foot off of the accelerator any time soon.

Mundanity EP is released on 17 July 2020 via Young Poet Records. 

More about: Youth Sector