An Afternoon with Opus Kink
The first time I saw Opus Kink was on a rather damp Sunday evening a couple of months ago - my birthday. I had dragged a small squabble of mates from the depths of South London and ventured eastwards to the trusty Old Blue Last in Hackney. It being a Sunday, we weren't expecting much so were overjoyed at the thought of having a solid plan for the night. We had very limited knowledge of the Brightonian sextet and their music . If ever there was a band that I would recommend seeing with zero prior knowledge, it would be these guys. Not knowing the lyrics or melodies to any of their songs, if anything, made the experience all the more enjoyable because of the excitement of the discovery. The funky licks paired with chest-vibrating bass lines and incredible front-man-energy (FME?) of lead singer, Angus Rogers, made for a set of sweaty sustained elation. Their energy was contagious and we all left with that prolonged feeling of excitable wonder - similar to that when you drunkenly stumble into a festival tent to hear some unknown band perform and half an hour later emerge with wide eyes and an accelerated heartbeat, as if you're on the edge of some big discovery. That's an Opus Kink gig for you.
Fast forward a few weeks and I'm sitting in a beer garden in the middle of Greenwich surrounded by 4 out of the 6 lovely members. They're playing a show in the pub later that evening so I'm there early to get them pint-ed and find out more. To start off, the guys want to make sure that it's clear that there are two members missing; saxophonist Jed and trumpeter Johnny, or as they like to call them - 'The Horny Boys'. Very much part of the band, they were caught up in Brighton so absent from the interview.
Here I am, surrounded by four disgustingly well dressed guys huddled under a garden-umbrella. To my left is Fin (drums) and opposite him, Sam (bass and vocals). They're brothers. Next to Sam is Angus the frontman and to his right is Jazz (keys).
LB: HOW DID OPUS KINK COME TOGETHER?
Angus: There’s a prelude to our beautiful coming-together story, which is that I used to babysit Jazz and his little sister when he was 10 and I was 15. *Jazz rolls his eyes* There was a little interim after that and then just from growing up in the same hometowns we alway ended up playing together really.
Fin: (Points to Sam) And we're brothers, so we were pretty much stuck with each other from a young age.
Whilst making the connections between every band member...similar to the standard party conversation that bounces around the room regarding how everyone loosely knows the host...I latch onto the story of how Johnny (one of 'The Horny Boys') came to be in the band.
Jazz: He taught me and Fin at college but it wasn't the usual student-music teacher relationship. We would go on big nights out with him and have long practices and then he would be teaching us in class the next morning. We would just be sitting there, hungover & laughing at each other like ‘what is going on?’ We knew we wanted a brass section so it just made total sense.
So there you are. Opus Kink is made up of a couple of brothers, a couple of mates, a music teacher and a babysitter? Pretty cool.
Photos: Tilly Pearson
ON DESCRIBING THEIR 'SOUND'...
Angus: We wanted to make something you could groove to and was a sort of smorgasbord of everything we listened to, rather than just picking a genre and doing the indie guitar thing. We love that sometimes, don't get me wrong, but were much more attracted to the other option.
Jazz: We all went to End of The Road festival, and I think after that we were all pretty... enlightened?
Sam: There was a moment where we all just got stupidly excited at the thought of going home and just jamming...not even calling it a band. Going to see random bands and just going “What the fuck was that” in the best way possible. That kickstarted us and made it pretty clear what the type of music we wanted to make was.
Angus: It's sort of... a meeting of everything we love fed through a mangled filter of ourselves, rather than ‘we are going to do funk music or rock music’... When we played Bestival last summer a quote from the Sunday Best described us as “a groove powerhouse...it's very, very flattering but yeah, we quite like it!
When discussing the bands influences they seem to range from the Beatles and the Stones to Fela Kuti and Ali Farka Touré. Mix that in with a sprinkle of EDM and a dollop of Miles Davis and soon it becomes pretty clear why describing their sound isn't the easiest task...
‘What's next for Opus Kink?!’ I hear you ask. WELL, they're bringing out new music! Tomorrow! The band are coming out with a double A-side entitled MOSQUITO/FASTER on Friday 29th November (yes! Tomorrow!) that will be available on all streaming platforms.
TELL US A BIT ABOUT THE WRITING PROCESS BEHIND MOSQUITO/FASTER:
Angus: It all started with the riff. I'd had the Mosquito riff since 2016 but it was very slow and acoustic - thats a good thing to note - don’t throw anything away ! It started as a weird slow ballad but once we put it through the ‘Kinky Machine’ it came out as this amazing weird huge chorus. I would say that's the best thing about the band, how someone can bring the skeleton of an idea to the group and then we’ll all chip in and it will come out totally unrecognisable. I came in saying ‘I want the drums to be really slinky’ and then Fin, not listening and probably thinking about, I don't know Haribos or something, brought in the fat beat and we were all taken back by it... and it just grew from there.
Sam: I was working on some jokey dance project in my bedroom and had the scraps of 'Faster' with no lyrics and a different riff that Angus was messing around and singing over. We put a very camp twist on it *trying to remember*...that's right, Angus was pretending to be a Roman Emperor... It was basically the product of fucking about in the bedroom with your mate... Boxers were on. It was a funny joke and then same again, surfing through stuff later we found it and thought ‘there’s something here boys’ and the track was born.
AS FOR THE MIXING AND MASTERING...
Angus: We came to the attention of Tim Bulleyment and Liam Watson (of Toe Rag Studios in Clapton) who ended up producing this project. They luckily heard about us through the grapevine. There was some loose connections...something like Jedd’s dads brothers mate is mates with Tim who knows Liam - it's one of those kind of things, like dog walkers, piano teachers, cat feeders... that kind of thing. So in April this year we went into the studio with these 4 very lengthy elaborate tracks, planning to record a 4 track EP in one day and they laughed straight in our face. We had never been produced properly before and the brutality of an experienced Grammy-winning producer who has a very busy schedule going ‘What you doing? You don’t need that' really helped us grow. We took it in our stride and changed bits and bobs and the results are these very raw, stripped back tracks that we are super proud of. It's exciting to have your work go through a brutal mangle that catches you off guard. Bring it on! The learning curve continues."
WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO AT THE MOMENT?
Angus: Fumaça Preta - a couple of Latin jazz players who met a UK punk band and merged. Very weird mix of jagged guitars and weird little out of tune recorders with an amazing dubby latin underbelly to it.
Jazz: Mauskovic Dance Band from Amsterdam are just incredible. Fin and I saw them at Glastonbury 3 times. They're groove based with cuban/latino influence and a bit of afro beat influence... they brand themselves as 'SPACE DISCO'.
Sam: A big influence for bass playing is the rhythm section in Songhoy Blues - I saw them at Komedia not too long ago and that was an amazing gig.
Fin: As a drummer I listen to a lot of old stuff, so the big ones like Cream, Led Zeppelin, and recently the drummer from Black Midi, because he is just unbelievable.
WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO ON YOUR LAST BUS HOME?
Jazz: I'm on Apollo - Brian Eno. I'm getting spacey and tuning in full volume, feeling it through my body and getting proper synthy.
Sam: If the night isn't quite over yet and I'm still in good spirits then probably Talking Heads.
ANY TRACK/ALBUM IN GENERAL?
Sam: Anything LIVE! Always, always live Talking Heads.
Angus: It's got to be Leonard Cohen for me. A bit of Nick too probably. My boy, Nick Cave (big up Brighton). But yeah, something like that. Very morose and depressing.
Fin: A bit of Confidence Man *this answer is met with immediate enthusiasm from the others*
…CONFIDENCE MAN?
Jazz: You don't know Confidence Man?! Oh my god. They're incredible.
Angus: They're this party... disco... pumping Australian band. Amazing.
As imagined, they played a brilliant show later that evening and had the audience right in the palm of their communal hand throughout their whole set. Whether it was getting everyone down on the floor or jumping up in the air and losing their minds, all it took was a slight gesture from Angus and the crowd hypnotically followed suit. If you want to hop on the bandwagon and see them play live before they start to take over the world then scroll down for upcoming gigs.
30TH NOVEMBER - @ The Windmill, Brixton, [£5 otd]
6TH DECEMBER - @ Amersham Arms, New Cross [£4 otd]
7TH DECEMBER - Release show @ Latest Music Bar [£6 otd or buy them here]
28TH DECEMBER - @ The Hope & Ruin, Brighton [buy tickets here]
