Lonelady Fights Political Disillusionment With Hurtling “Bunkerpop” Video
Singing about a bunker dance party with radical potential, the Manchester artist gives us a taste of her forthcoming album, Hinterlands.
LoneLady – Bunkerpop from Warp Records on Vimeo.
"Bunkerpop" is the latest single from Warp Records' Lonelady, real name Julie Campbell, and it finds the artist extending her hometown of Manchester's illustrious post-punk legacy. Where her antecedents like Joy Division and Section 25 expressed political disillusion through postindustrial aesthetics, Campbell opts instead to push the idea of a bunker dance party with radical potential. Over a Prince-esque extended groove, "Bunkerpop" is a hurtling amalgamation of machines, guitars, and voices, with the video depicting a self-possessed Campbell reeling through decaying, open space, excited at the prospect of filling it all up with sound.
In an email to The FADER, Campbell offered the following poetics to round the track out: "Concrete interior as state of mind. Locomotive pulse and uplifting synth sax choruses. Linn drums, early Yamaha keyboard sounds and layers of synthetic percussion build a restless architecture over which sections of the upbeat and haunted alternate. Part-hallucination, part-party for one in a bunker, where putting a record on is to conjure presences." Check out the striking video directed by Juliet Ellis and Graham Clayton Chance above, and be sure to check the forthcoming LP, Hinterland, due March 23rd.
Photo credit: Alex Hurst