Honestly, we’ve become so accustomed to bad news that Labour’s landslide victory in the UK general election on 4th July has been a hard one to process, despite it being a dead cert. The Tories are actually gone? Can it be real?
So this week we decided to piece together our memories of the last 14 years of cuts, corruption and chaos, and see if we can identify the sound of Tory Britain – not just the stuff that was popular or that we liked, but the music that was born in the political Petri dish of austerity.
Tom and Chal first met not long after the Tory-Lib Dem coalition took power in 2010 (not sure exactly when, but it was Night Slugs era) and were working together at FACT by 2013. So we’ve spent most of our music careers toiling under the long shadow of George Osborne’s turbo-cuts to public spending – not to mention Brexit batshittery, the crazy days of Corbynism, the aftermath of the Grenfell disaster and Black Lives Matter, and of course the lockdown years and attendant Covid conspiracies. It’s been a wild ride. Just typing this is giving us brutal flashbacks to watching this unfold live on FACT HQ’s TV.
But more specifically, the politics of austerity Britain changed the nation’s musical culture. In this episode we talk about the dominance of festivals at the expense of clubbing, the sound of the student protest movement, the emergence of drill in the hollowed out communities of South London, and the political backlash to the five-headed monster of Cameron, May, Boris, Truss (lol) and Sunak. A curse on all their houses.
We also have a think about why Keir Starmer seems to have forgotten his musical roots, and what we might expect from a Labour government that’s appointed Lisa “Towns” Nandy as culture minister.
And remember that this Saturday 20th July we’ll be in Glasgow for a live No Tags experience, hosted by Feena and Wheelman at Glasgow University Chapel! Tickets are available on the door, or you can sign up for membership of the Events Research Programme for a mere £3.50. ERP are cohosting the event with the Infrastructure Humanities Group, which sounds quite highbrow and academic, so we’re glad that someone’s finally taking us seriously.
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22: So what was the sound of Tory Britain?