Monthly Archives: March 2024

Tash first took to the drums as a shy nine-year-old, channelling its monolithic sound as a means of self-expression. As the only musician in the family, music never seemed like anything other than a hobby, but after joining grassroots music organisation Tomorrow’s Warriors in 2018 and becoming part of their Female Frontline band, she found herself embedded in London’s burgeoning jazz scene. At the same time, Joe was building his reputation as a key player in the capital, after spending a decade with afro-jazz outfit Nubiyan Twist.

Manoeuvring around similar scenes, the pair finally met after being hired for the same gig in 2019 and noticed an immediate chemistry. “I felt a real connection playing with Tash,” Joe says. “We shared the same mentality of telling a musical story, rather than just shredding technical ideas.”

They resolved to keep jamming together and once the Covid lockdowns hit in 2020 and all gigs were pulled, they finally found the time. “We joined up as a ‘bubble’ and spent pretty much every day improvising with each other for months,” Tash says. “We would play along to tracks we liked and talk about our influences, from Deftones to A Tribe Called Quest, Radiohead and Floating Points. We became really excited about introducing each other to music and rekindling our love of finding new music as kids.”

Harnessing that childlike enthusiasm allowed the duo to move away from the jazz music they had been playing and to reconnect with their first loves of heavier, noisier sounds. For Joe, that meant revisiting his first experience of seeing legendary experimental British saxophonist Pete Wareham play with his Acoustic Ladyland band as a teenager and witnessing the electronic wizardry that could emerge from processing a horn through a pedal board. While for Tash, it meant smashing through the backbeat of rock tracks, letting her hands fly over the drum kit and cymbals.

Settling on the initial band name Toe – as an elision of their names – before changing to O. to avoid confusion with the Japanese post-rock group Toe, Tash and Joe began playing their first shows, which were restricted to pandemic livestreams. “We tested our neighbours’ patience,” Tash says. “Until our third show got booked, which was at The Windmill.”

Transforming seamlessly from living room jams into the sweaty, packed confines of The Windmill, the band soon caught the attention of venue booker Tim Perry, who was taken by their capacity to produce such an intense flow with so few instruments. “We call him our Fairy Godfather because he gave us a residency at a venue where we could really hone our sound to a live audience,” Joe says. “Then he asked if we wanted to go on tour with black midi.”

Following the experimental trio on 25 dates across the UK and Europe in 2021 and 2022, it was here that O. drilled down to the essence of their onstage presence. “We were so inspired by the playfulness black midi shared onstage and it gave us confidence to get darker and heavier in our sound,” Tash says. “We also really built our stamina to be able to play fast and hard with just the two of us for a full hour.”

Flexing those live muscles further on tour with Irish post-punk group Gilla Band, O. were then introduced to black midi’s producer Dan Carey and quickly began work on what would become their debut EP, “SLICE”. “Dan had been to see us play a lot and he just wanted us to recreate the raw energy of being on stage in the studio,” Joe says. “It’s such a full, bassy sound and Dan simply allows us to play the music.”

Finding freedom in Carey’s intuitive, analogue process, 2023’s SLICE produced five tracks of propulsive instrumentals, from the endless crescendo of “Moon” to the synth pedal distortions of “Grouchy” and jump-up blasts of “ATM”. “Slice is a snapshot of different sides of the band, it’s a playful taster,” Tash says. “Whereas with the album, we’re getting louder and more intense, experimenting with noise and our metal influences. It’s a full, freeing force.”