NEWS: London art-rock quartet DEVICES reveal details of debut EP 'Husband #1' due 31 May....

April 29, 2024 Steve Muscutt

Photograph by Tirtha Lawati

Following an energetic burst of singles; RED, Hold Your Tongue and Gun Boy – London based art rock quartet devices return with their anticipated first EP “Husband #1”, on independent label Red Tongue Music, release date 31 May.

Husband #1 is named partly in tribute to a conversation devices vocalist Robin Footitt had at the British Museum with a stranger named Alexis on the hunt for Husband #4. “There’s a certain humour to calling your current spouse, our EP, Husband #1… it’s like we are already on the lookout for the next one. If you saw us live, you’d know that is true.”

Formed in the summer of 2022, guitarist Fadi Borgi, alongside bassist Martin Llavallol and drummer Louis Richardson (Joana And The Wolf, GUTTS) accelerated when adding vocalist Robin Footitt in early 2023, quickly establishing a bond through collaborative songwriting. Louis comments, “devices for me have been a breath of fresh air. Four gay guys getting together and playing music is liberating. We are powerful together through music.”

Recorded at Brockley Studios, the venue which gave birth to the band’s name and their output to date: devices is what happens when left to your own devices. Husband #1 shifts in pace and tone, between a collision of guitars, bass and drums to an output that can appear surprising, building worlds around playful use of story and concept. Opening track ‘Afterlife’, is about rebirth, giving life to the moment by listening to the death of a song in its final form – the recording. Guitarist Fadi describes the intro, “You’re outside, it’s 9pm, it’s raining, you can hear the thump thump of the music in the club. It’s reminiscent of a broken record, skipping. Dare you go in?”

‘Cap It Off’ is an inventive break up song between creativity and the need to support oneself financially. Written from first-hand experience as a visual artist, Robin presented the song to the group initially acapella, “To cap it off has always felt like a very conservative phrase to me, there is an assumption in Britain if you come from a particular place or background that you can’t raise yourself out of your own circumstances. So, Cap It Off makes a mountain of all those preconceptions and ties it up with a bow.”

The EP ends with a trilogy of songs about male personal relationships, all three dispelling an internal moral history of doubt, intimacy, and shame. ‘Headspace’ opens with the lyric, “I heard you say, he’s okay and I start to form an opinion.” describing the mood and method in which friends’ throwaway comments can influence potential romance. It’s a cavernous song which sets a journey of kick drum heartbeats across an ocean of sea metaphors and crashing waves of guitars – “You sunk my relationship!”

‘M*n’ navigates the difficult space of expressing masculine feelings, acknowledging historic flaws and aggressions but also the want and need for connection with other men. The song, which was the most recently written, started with bassist Martin, “Johnny Marr says that certain guitars seemed to have Smiths songs already inside them. I bought a new guitar and for three days I tried to shake out the devices songs inside it, unsuccessfully. I played it in a rehearsal and the others immediately picked up on it, becoming another collective effort. I should buy guitars more often.”

Husband #1 encapsulates devices’ increasing reputation for challenging their own experiences of listening to music growing up which would often conflict with their own sexuality mixed in with their international beginnings (Martin grew up in Argentina; Fadi in Lebanon and France). It concludes with ‘Zeros & Ceilings’, a song about wearing the shame expressed by others and the strength within from overcoming personal doubt. Just as you have devices soundscape plotted, saxophones join the EP and echo the vocal’s roots in nostalgia and eighties new romanticism, a time when gender and sexuality were both equally fluid across art forms yet politically oppressed.

To prepare yourselves for the release of the debut EP, on May 31st, here’s their latest track ‘Gun Boy’.

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devices are

Fadi Borgi // guitar

Martin Llavallol // bass

Louis Richardson // drums

Robin Footitt // vocals

Band Links:

Instagram - www.instagram.com/yourowndevices

Bandcamp - https://yourowndevices.bandcamp.com/

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/3HihgBFnaJLsPHJkKjiVWU?si=t0-LL0f5SSOJjNmm2OUlDQ

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@devicesband